844 JOHN BARTLETT. 



from lively to severe." It extends into the year 1901, when it ceased 

 only on account of his failing eyesight. It is an extraordinary list, in- 

 cluding really all that is good (and much that is not) in English literature, 

 prose and poetry, together with translations of works written in foreign 

 tongues. He did not confine himself to one reading of a book that 

 pleased him. For example, he read Lecky's " European Morals " and 

 Darwin's " Descent of Man " three times, the elder D'Israeli's works and 

 the "Annals" and "Agricola" of Tacitus twice, while for Gibbon we find the 

 extraordinary record of four readings. Many of the standard poets and 

 novelists he read over and over again. Nor did he confine himself to the 

 older books. He kept up with the times. Among the titles of the last 

 years of his record we find the first four volumes of Rhodes's " History of 

 the United States," Lord Rosebery's " Napoleon," and, as the next to the 

 last entry in the pamphlet, the "Creevey Papers." 



This extraordinary course of reading and the equally extraordinary 

 memory, which he retained unimpaired almost to the very last, were what 

 fitted him to compile " Familiar Quotations," a work too well known to 

 all lovers of literature to need further characterization here. The first 

 edition, a small thin octavo of 295 pages, published in Cambridge 

 in 1855, grew to the tall thick volume of the ninth and last edition 

 of 1891, comprising 1158 pages, with one of the most useful indexes 

 that ever was composed. It includes also nearly five thousand footnotes, 

 consisting of cross references to the earlier sources of the thought ex- 

 pressed in the quotation concerned, to parallel passages, or to obvious 

 imitations. This part of the book was a real work of literary research, 

 and in 1871 Harvard University appreciatively conferred the honorary 

 degree of A.M. upon the author. Of the sale of" Familiar Quotations " 

 the present publishers can give no exact figures, but report that there is 

 no doubt that it has reached nearly a quarter of a million copies in its 

 various editions. A less widely known work was the " Shakespeare 

 Phrase Book," 1881, (pp. 1034), "a concordance of phrases rather than 

 of mere words, taking every sentence which contains an important 

 thought." This is of course superseded for scholars by the later " New 

 and Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases and 

 Passages in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, with a supplementing 

 concordance to his poems," a large quarto of 1910 pages, published by 

 Macmillan & Co. in London, 1894. Upon this great work he and his 

 wife labored lovingly together at intervals during twenty years. She 

 was herself of literary race, being the daughter of Sidney Willard, 

 professor of Hebrew, and granddaughter of President Joseph Willard, 



