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The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1910
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]». Краткое содержание книги:
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 01 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 03 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 04 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 05 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 06 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 07 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 08 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 09 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 10 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 11 — Ancient and Mediæval History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 12 — Modern History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 13 — Religion and Philosophy от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 17 — Poetry and Drama от Неизвестный
The world's greatest books от Mee, Arthur, 1875-1943, joint editor & Hammerton, John Alexander, Sir, 1871-1949, joint editor & McClure, S. S. (Samuel Sidney), 1857-1949, joint editor
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 19 — Travel and Adventure от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index от Неизвестный
There is no end to the subjects discussed by "The Spectator." They range from dreams to dress and duelling; from ghosts to gardening and goats' milk; from wigs to wine and widows; from religion to riches and riding; from servants to sign-posts and snuff-boxes; from love to lodgings and lying; from beards to bankruptcy and blank verse; and hundreds of other interesting themes. Correspondents often wrote to emphasise this variety, for letters from the outside public were always welcome. Thus one "Thomas Trusty":
"The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that by pulling some pieces of isinglass over it was changed into a senator or a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, a beau or a blackamoor, a prude or a coquette, a country squire or a conjurer, with many other different representations very entertaining, though still the same at the bottom."
But perhaps, on the whole, woman and her little ways have the predominant attention. Indeed, Addison expressly avowed this object of engaging the special interests of the sex when he started. He says:
"There are none to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought that there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are women than as they are reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is reckoned a very good morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation, that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as of love, into their male beholders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, if not an improving, entertainment, and by that means, at least, divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles."
These reflections on the manners of women did not quite please Swift, who wrote to Stella: "I will not meddle with 'The Spectator'; let him fair sex it to the world's end." But they pleased most other people, as the main contents of "The Spectator" still please. Here is one typical acknowledgment, signed "Leonora":
Mr. Spectator,—Your paper is part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, "'the Spectator' was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment."
As an "abstract and brief chronicle of the time," this monumental work of Addison and Steele is without peer. In its pages may be traced the foundations of all that is noble and healthy in modern English thought; and its charming sketches may be made the open sesame to a period and a literature as rich as any our country has seen.
ÆSOP
Fables
It is in the fitness of things that the early biographies of Æsop, the great fabulist, should be entirely fabulous. Macrobius has distinguished between fabula and fabulosa narratio: "He would have a fable to be absolutely false, and a fabulous narration to be a number of fictions built upon a foundation of truth." The Lives of Æsop belong chiefly to the latter category. In the following pages what is known of the life of Æsop is set forth, together with condensed versions of some of his most characteristic fables, which have long passed into the wisdom of all nations, this being a subject that calls for treatment on somewhat different lines from the majority of the works dealt with in The World's Greatest Books.
Introductory
Pierre Bayle, in his judicious fashion, sums up what is said of Æsop in antiquity, resting chiefly upon Plutarch. "Plutarch affirms: (1) That Crœsus sent Æsop to Periander, the Tyrant of Corinth, and to the Oracle of Delphi; (2) that Socrates found no other expedient to obey the God of Dreams, without injuring his profession, than to turn the Fables of Æsop into verse; (3) that Æsop and Solon were together at the Court of Crœsus, King of Lydia; (4) that those of Delphi, having put Æsop to death cruelly and unjustly, and finding themselves exposed to several calamities on account of this injustice, made a public declaration that they were ready to make satisfaction to the memory of Æsop; (5) that having treated thereupon with a native of Samos, they were delivered from the evil that afflicted them."
To this summary Bayle added a footnote concerning "The Life of Æsop, composed by Meziriac": "It is a little book printed at Bourg-en-Bress, in 1632. It contains only forty pages in 16. It is becoming exceedingly scarce.... This is what I extract from it. It is more probable that Æsop was born at Cotiœum, a town of Phrygia, than that he was born at Sardis, or in the island of Samos, or at Mesembria in Thrace. The first master that he served was one Zemarchus, or Demarchus, surnamed Carasius, a native and inhabitant of Athens. Thus it is probable that it was there he learned the purity of the Greek tongue, as in its spring, and acquired the knowledge of moral philosophy which was then in esteem....
"In process of time he was sold to Xanthus, a native of the Isle of Samos, and afterwards to Idmon, or Iadmnon, the philosopher, who was a Samian also, and who enfranchised him. After he had recovered his liberty, he soon acquired a great reputation among the Greeks; so that the report of his singular wisdom having reached the ears of Crœsus, he sent to inquire after him; and having conceived an affection for him, he obliged him by his favours to engage himself in his service to the end of his life. He travelled through Greece—whether for his own pleasure or for the private affairs of Crœsus is uncertain—and passing by Athens, soon after Pisistratus had usurped the sovereign power there and had abolished the popular state, and seeing that the Athenians bore the yoke very impatiently, he told them the Fable of the Frogs that asked a King of Jupiter. Afterwards he met the Seven Wise Men in the City of Corinth at the Tyrant Periander's. Some relate that, in order to show that the life of man is full of miseries, and that one pleasure is attended with a thousand pains, Æsop used to say that when Prometheus took the clay to form man, he did not temper it with water, but with tears."
Concerning the death of this extraordinary man we read that Æsop went to Delphi, with a great quantity of gold and silver, being ordered by Crœsus to offer a great sacrifice to Apollo, and to give a considerable sum to each inhabitant. The quarrel which arose between the Delphians and him was the occasion, after his sending away the sacrifice, of his sending back the money to Crœsus; for he thought that those for whom this prince designed it had rendered themselves unworthy of it. The inhabitants of Delphi contrived an accusation of sacrilege against him, and, pretending that they had convicted him, cast him down from the top of a rock.