INTRODUCTION. 



or The Ring," and Schiller's "William Tell"; omitting Lacretius, 

 which is perhaps rather too difficult, and Miss Austen, as English 

 novelists were somewhat over-represented. 



Another objection made has been that the books mentioned are 

 known to every one, at any rate by name ; that they are as household 

 words. Every one, it has been said, knows about Herodotus and 

 Homer, Shakespeare and Milton. There is, no doubt, some truth 

 in this. But even Lord Iddesleigh, as Mr. Lang has pointed out 

 in his " Life," had never read Marcus Aurelius, and I may add 

 that he afterwards thanked me warmly for having suggested the 

 "Meditations" to him.* If, then, even Lord Iddesleigh, " prob- 

 ably one of the last of English statesmen who knew the literature 

 of Greece and Rome widely and well," had not read Marcus 

 Aurelius, we may well suppose that others also may be in the same 

 position. It is also a curious commentary on what was no doubt 

 an unusually wide knowledge of classical literature that Mr. Lang 

 should ascribe and probably quite correctly Lord Iddesleigh's 

 never having had his attention called to one of the most beautiful 

 and improving books in classical, or indeed in any other literature, 

 to the fact that the emperor wrote in "crabbed and corrupt Greek." 



Again, a popular writer in a recent work has observed that " why 

 any one should select the best hundred, more than the best eleven, 

 or the best thirty books, it is hard to conjecture." But this remark 

 entirely misses the point. Eleven books, or even thirty, would be 

 very few ; but no doubt I might just as well have given 90, or 'no. 

 Indeed, if our arithmetical notition had been duodecimal instead 

 of decimal, I should no doubt have made up the number to 120. 

 I only chose 100 as being a round number. 



Another objection has been that 'every one should be left to 

 choose for himself. And so he must. No list can be more than 

 a suggestion. But a great literary authority can hardly perhaps 

 realize the difficulty of selection. An ordinary person turned into 

 a library and sarcastically told to choose for himself, has to do so 

 almost at haphazard. He may perhaps light upon a book with an 

 attractive title, and after wasting on it much valuable time and 

 patience, find that, instead of either pleasure or profit, he has 

 weakened, or perhaps lost, his love of reading. 



Messrs. George Routledge and Sons have conceived the idea ol 

 publishing the books contained in my list in a handy and cheap 

 form, selecting themselves the editions which they prefer ; and I 

 believe that in doing so they will confer a benefit on many who 

 have not funds or space to collect a large library. 



JOHN LUBBOCK, 

 HIGH ELMS, 



DOWN, KENT, 



30 March, 1891. 



* I have since had many other letters to the same effect. 



