10
TALE ALUMNI
LESLIE STEPHEN.
WV .5: Bus tho Aa eae
PAUL BOURGET.
ARCHDEACON FARRAR.
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.
WEEKLY
From World-Famed Minds.
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER’S NEW LIBRARY IS THE
CREATION OF THE MOST BRILLIANT
INTELLECTS OF THIS AGE.
We have given such unstinted com-
mendation to Charles Dudley War-
ner’s new library that it is almost im-
possible to say more. But as we take up
the succeeding volumes, as they come
from the press—there are eight of
them so far—there seems to us a Side
to this really wonderful publication
which may easily be lost sight of in the
vastness and variety of its contents.
This is that the new Library will form
the most perfect and exhaustive Histo-
ry of Literature that has yet been
written.
There was high need for such a his-
tory. One may search the book-stores
and libraries in vain to find a single
broadly popular work which gives
within convenient compass a compre-
hensive survey of literature in all ages
and in all countries. True, we have
such a history in detached and scat-
tered chapters. There are many admir-
able studies in English or American, or
French or German, or Greek and Classi-
cal literature. But these are so numer-
ous, several of them comprising a num-
ber of volumes in themselves, that tak-
en together they would alone make up
a small library.
And this is only half the story. The
other side of the matter is that most
‘histories of literatures’ are hopeless-
ly dull and uninteresting. With a very
few exceptions they have been written
by dreary pedants, and have utterly
lacked that rare power to alike illumi-
nate and instruct and charm.
But in the new Library, now in
course of publication under Mr. War-
ner’s finely competent editorial direc-
tion, we have not only just such a
broad and universal history of books
that we stood in so much need—books
the most ancient and the most modern,
and those of our own and of the most
distant peoples—but it is history in a
new and most delightful form.
In this happy solution of a compli-
cated problem, we deem that Mr. War-
ner has performed a service of unusu-
al felicity and value. In one fine stroke
he has given us at once such a history
of the literature of all the world and
monographs on its greatest writers;
and with all this he has given that
which is most truly representative and
most enduring of the greatest writers’
works, or to state the matter con-
versely, in the new Library we have
not alone a splendid storehouse of real
literature, gathering up the best that
has been written in every age and by
every people that ever engaged in the
production of books; we find this vast
treasury of learning made exemplary
and, as it were, a work of reference to
what is undoubtedly the finest general
and biographical history that has ever
been prepared.
This in itself would be a superb un-
dertaking. But Mr. Warner has—and
it was thoroughly characteristic of him
—accomplished ‘this task in a way that,
while authoritative in the highest de-
gree, seems yet to possess that same
subtle charm and deep human interest
which pervades his individual works.
For each of the greater writers and
the more important topics he has press-
ed into service the one man who among
all men living is most competent, upon
this man or that topic, to speak; and
from these foremost authorities he has
obtained a series of critical and inter-
pretative essays which say the wisest,
and most interesting word it is possible
to say upon each subject treated.
These are strong terms, and yet it
seems to us that they are justified by
the most cursory glance at Mr. War-
ner’s splendid list of contributors. Tf,
for example, we were asked to name
who among all living’ writers would be
most likely to give, for English-speak-
ing people, the clearest insight into the
purpose and mission of Russia’s great-
est novelist, we should inevitably say
Mr. Howells. And it is Mr. Howells
who writes the article upon Tolstoi for
the Library. So, too, if we were asked
the same question in regard to the
man who, now that Froude is dead,
would be likely to present a thoroughly
fresh view of Carlyle, we would most
likely answer Leslie Stephen. And it
is Leslie Stephen whom Mr. Warner
has appointed to write the Carlyle ar-
ticle for the JVuibrary.
Nothing, again, could be more appro-
priate than that ex-President Andrew
D. White, who has lately been returned
to his former post as Ambassador to
Germany, should treat of Erasmus. To
our day at least, the name of the
great Dutch scholar is not one to ex-
cite profound interest; but those who
have been privileged to read President
White’s latest work, ‘“‘The Warfare of
Theology with Science,’ know well his
genial power to make the dry bones |
and mummies of history live. And un-
der the strokes of his pen Erasmus does
live, and has for us a meaning and a
personality.
We have spoken of Gibbon and the
“Decline and Fall.’”’ Who could be bet-
ter fitted to estimate for us, now, the
value of Gibbon’s monumental histo-
ry than the historian Lecky, who has
delved so deeply and written so learn-
edly of those very times covered by
the ‘‘Decline and Fall?’ And where
could we find a man better equinped
to write of the great tragic poet of the
Greek Sophocles, than the greatest of
living Greek historians, Prof.. Mahaffy,
of Dublin?
Then, to come down to our own time
and our own country, we note Henry
James contributing a critical mono-
sraph upon Hawthorne, and yet anoth-
er upon Russell Lowell. Opinion may
vary as to the quality, or rather in-
terest, of Henry James’ novels, but we
Shall never have a surfeit of those keen,
delicate character studies and analyti-
cal essays of his, of which these two
last seem among the best. Much the
Same might be said of that Henry
James of the French, Paul Bourget.
He is at his best in his ‘‘Portraits,” and
it is easy to see that he would be es-
pecially inspired in writing, as he has
for this Library. of that incomparable
master of French fiction, Flaubert.
It is the unique distinction of Prof.
Edward Dowden, of Dublin, to be per-
haps the greatest Shakesnearean au-
thority, and the most deeply versed in
the work of Goethe, of any man now
alive; so that not in the whole world
could any one be found more capable
of saying a new and illuminative word
upon these two tonics than he. Prof.
Dowden is not only a great scholar.
but a writer of very great power: and
his two articles uvon Shakesveare and
Goethe, are among the finest contri-
butions of this distinguished comnanv.
Tt is further illustrative of the hroad
range of this remarkable work that we
shold find Archdescon Farrar writing
of the “Titerarv Grandeur of the New
Testament.” and Professor Crawford
-H. Toy of Harvard. of the Old Testa-
ment in the Jight of modern criticism;
and then again Professor BF. Rav T.an-
kester of Oxford making an exnnosition
of Darwinism and the Darwinian the-
orv, and likewise writing a critical ar-
ticle upon Huxley. who had so much
to say regarding Darwinism and the
New and Old Testament as well.
Not to unduly extend the exhibit, it
is with the same pervading sense of fit-
ness and authority that we find Numas
treated hy Andrew Lang, and Dumas
fils hy M. Sarcev, the most celebrated
of dramatic critics; Macaulay and
Freeman by John Bach McMaster;
Taine and Renan by the great French
eritic, Brunetiere: Burns bv the necet
Stoddard; John Stuart Mill by Profes-
sor Ely: Henrv Ward Beecher hy ly-
man Abbott; Dante by Charles Fliot
Norton, and Byron by Charles Dudley
Warner himself.
We select these names. at random
from a list of several hundred of the
foremost of living critics and writers,
not onlv of this:country but of "ing-
land and the Continent as well. Never
befcre, we are convinced, has ther> ever
been gathered together such ar imopns-
ing array of famous names to do so
fine and lasting a work. Volume after
volume is filled with critical and his-
torical essavs of so high a literary qual-
ity that, taken together, they compris2
such a history of-iiterature as has
never before been written, andj the like
of which will in all probabilitv: not
azain avpear for generations to come.
But when the thousand chiefest names
of the makers of books have all been
pvassed in review in this new and in-
teresting way, there are yet bundreds
of others, more or less known, who at.
some time or other of their lives have
done some notable thing. The fame of
many rests upon some single achieve-
ment, which has rescued its author
from oblivion. It would have been
easy enough to pass these by: but not.
one has been lost to the Wibrary. They
have every one been ineluded in a dc-
partment of deev and curious value to
the Famous Books of the Werld. With-
in this volume some 2,500 graphic ana-
Ivses have been made of celebrated nov-
els and poems and rare and ancient
books. We know of nothing in all the
range of critical writing which excecds
the worth and merit of this depart-
ment.
But we are not yet done with the
noteworthy features of this truly
epochal publication. Besides books and
the writers of books, there yet remain
the distinctive literatures of different
ages and different countries, which are
HON. ANDREW D. WHITE.
HENRY JAMES.
FRANCISQUE SARCEY.
PROF. EDWARD DOWDEN.
——
FERDINAND BRUNETIERE.
ANDREW LANG.
