ry, and
enjoyed without pedantry and with some imagination. The less usual and
more cynical of his plays, such as Troilus, and Cressida, Measure for
Measure and Timon of Athens, will be found to contain some very
interesting commentaries upon life.

The Shakespearean attitude of mind is quite a definite and articulate
one, and one that can be, by slow degrees, acquired, even by persons
who are not cultivated or clever. It is an attitude "compounded of
many simples," and, like the melancholy of Jaques, it wraps us about
"in a most humorous sadness." But the essential secret of
Shakespeare's genius is best apprehended in the felicity of certain
isolated passionate speeches, and in the magic of his songs.

10. MILTON. _Any edition_.

No epicurean lover of the subtler delicacies in poetic rhythm or of
the more exalted and translunar harmonies in the imaginative
suggestiveness of words, can afford to leave Milton untouched. In
sheer felicity of beauty--the beauty of suggestive words, each one
carrying "a perfume in the mention," and together, by their
arrangement in relation to one another, conveying a thrill of absolute
and final satisfaction--no poem in our language surpasses Lycidas, and
only the fine great odes of John Keats approach or equal it.

There are passages, too, in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes, which, for calm, flowing, and immortal loveliness,
are not surpassed in any poetry in the world.

Milton's work witnesses to the value in art of what is ancient and
traditional, but while he willingly uses every tradition of antiquity,
he stamps all he writes with his own formidable image and
superscription.

11. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. RELIGIO MEDICI AND URN BURIAL. _In the "Scott
Library" Series_.

The very spirit of ancient Norwich, the mellowest and most historic of
all English cities, breathes in these sumptuous and aromatic pages.
After Lamb and Pater, both of whom loved him well, Browne is the
subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be
enjoyed in our language. Not to catch the cadences of his peculiar
music is to confess oneself deaf to the finer harmonies of words.

12. GOETHE. FAUST, _translated in English Poetry by Bayard Taylor_.
WILHELM MEISTER, _in Carlyle's translation_. GOETHE'S CONVERSATIONS
WITH ECKERMAN, _translation in Bohn's Library_.

No other human name, except Da Vinci's, carries the high associations
of oracular and occult wisdom