{268a} Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_ should be possessed in the edition which Mr. Hugh Thomson has ill.u.s.trated and Mr. Austin Dobson has edited for the Macmillans. There is a good edition of Goldsmith's _Works_ in Bohn's Library.

{268b} Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ is also a volume for the second- hand bookstall, although that and the equally fine _Tristram Shandy_ may be obtained in many pretty forms. I have two editions of Sterne's books, but they are both fine old copies.

{268c} There are two very good editions of Peac.o.c.k's delightful romances. _Nightmare Abbey_ forms a volume of J. M. Dent's edition in 9 volumes, edited by Dr. Garnett; and the whole of Peac.o.c.k's remarkable stories are contained in a single volume of Newnes' "Thin Paper Cla.s.sics."

{268d} Sir Walter Scott's novels are available in many forms equally worthy of a good library. The best is the edition published by Jack of Edinburgh. The Temple Library of Scott (J. M. Dent) may be commended for those who desire pocket volumes, while Mr. Andrew Lang's Introductions give an added value to an edition published by the Macmillans, Scott's twenty-eight novels are indispensable to every good library, and every reader will have his own favourite.

{268e} Balzac's novels are obtainable in a good translation by Ellen Marriage, edited by George Saintsbury, published in New York by the Macmillan Company and in London by J. M. Dent.

{269a} A translation of Dumas' novels in 48 volumes is published by Dent. _The Three Musketeers_ is in 2 volumes. There are many cheap one volume editions.

{269b} Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ is pleasantly read in the edition of his novels published by J. M. Dent. His original publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., issue his works in many forms.

{269c} The best edition of Charlotte Bronte's _Villette_ is that in the "Haworth Edition," published by Smith, Elder & Co., with an Introduction by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

{269d} Charles d.i.c.kens' novels, of which _David Copperfield_ is generally p.r.o.nounced to be the best, should be obtained in the "Oxford India Paper d.i.c.kens" (Chapman & Hall and Henry Frowde). A serviceable edition is that published by the Macmillans, with Introductions by Charles d.i.c.kens's son, but that edition still fails of _Our Mutual Friend_ and _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, of which the copyright is not yet exhausted.

{269e} Anthony Trollope's novels are being reissued, in England by John Lane and George Bell & Sons, and in America in a most attractive form by Dodd, Mead & Co. All three publishers have a good edition of _Barchester Towers_, Trollope's best novel.

{269f} Boccaccio's _Decameron_ is in my library in many forms--in 3 volumes of the Villon Society's publications, translated by John Payne; in 2 handsome volumes issued by Laurence & Bullen; and in the Extra Volumes of Bohn's Library. There is a pretty edition available published by Gibbons in 3 volumes.

{270a} Emily Bronte's _Wuthering Heights_ forms a volume of the Haworth Edition of the Bronte novels, published by Smith, Elder & Co. It has an introduction by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

{270b} Charles Reade's _Cloister and the Hearth_ is available in many forms. The pleasantest is in 4 volumes issued by Chatto & Windus, with an Introduction by Sir Walter Besant. There is a remarkable shilling edition issued by Collins of Glasgow.

{270c} Victor Hugo's _Les Miserables_ may be most pleasantly read in the 10 volumes, translated by M. Jules Gray, published by J. M. Dent & Co.

{270d} Mrs. Gaskell's _Cranford_ can be obtained in the six volume edition of that writer's works published by Smith, Elder & Co., with Introductions by Dr. A. W. Ward; in a volume ill.u.s.trated by Hugh Thomson, with an Introduction by Mrs. Ritchie, published by the Macmillans, or in the World's Cla.s.sics (Henry Frowde), where there is an additional chapter ent.i.tled, "The Cage at Cranford."

{270e} The translation of George Sand's _Consuelo_ in my library is by Frank H. Potter, 4 volumes, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

{270f} Lever's _Charles O'Malley_ I have as volumes of the _Complete Works_ published by Downey. There is a pleasant edition in Nelson's "Pocket Library."

{271a} Macaulay's _History of England_ is available in many attractive forms from the original publishers, the Longmans. There is a neat thin paper edition for the pocket in 5 volumes issued by Chatto & Windus.

{271b} For Carlyle's _Past and Present_ I recommend the Centenary Edition of Carlyle's _Works_, published by Chapman & Hall. There is an annotated edition of _Sartor Resartus_ by J. A. S. Barrett (A. & C.

Black), two annotated editions of _The French-Revolution_, one by Dr.

Holland Rose (G. Bell & Sons), and an other by C. R. L. Fletcher, 3 volumes (Methuen), and an annotated edition of _The Cromwell Letters_, edited by S. C. Lomax, 3 volumes (Methuen). No publisher has yet attempted an annotated edition of _Past and Present_, but Sir Ernest Clarke's translation of _Jocelyn of Bragelond_ (Chatto & Windus) may be commended as supplemental to Carlyle's most delightful book.

{271c} Motley's _Works_ are available in 9 volumes of a Library Edition published by John Murray. A cheaper issue of the _Dutch Republic_ is that in 3 volumes of the World's Cla.s.sics, to which I have contributed a biographical introduction.

{271d} For many years the one standard edition of _Gibbon_ was that published by John Murray, in 8 volumes, with notes by Dean Milman and others. It has been superseded by Professor Bury's annotated edition in 7 volumes (Methuen).

{272a} Plutarch's _Lives_, translated by A. Stewart and George Long, form 4 volumes of Bohn's Standard Library. There is a handy volume for the pocket in Dent's Temple Cla.s.sics in 10 volumes, translated by Sir Thomas North.

{272b} Montaigne's _Essays_ I have in three forms; in the Tudor Translations (David Nutt), where there is an Introduction to the 6 volumes of Sir Thomas North's translation by the Rt. Hon. George Wyndham; in Dent's Temple Cla.s.sics, where John Florio's translation is given in 5 volumes. A much valued edition is that in 3 volumes, the translation by Charles Cotton, published by Reeves & Turner in 1877.

{272c} Steele's essays were written for the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_ side by side with those of Addison. The best edition of _The Spectator_ is that published in 8 volumes, edited by George A. Aitken for Nimmo, and of _The Tatler_ that published in 4 volumes, edited also by Mr. Aitken for Duckworth & Co.

{272d} Lamb's _Essays of Elia_ can be read in a volume of the Eversley Library (Macmillan), edited by Canon Ainger. The standard edition of Lamb's _Works_ is that edited by Mr. E. V. Lucas, in 7 volumes, for Methuen. Mr. Lucas's biography of Lamb has superseded all others.

{272e} Thomas de Quincey's _Opium Eater_ may be obtained as a volume of Newnes's Thin Paper Cla.s.sics, in the World's Cla.s.sics, or in Dent's Everyman's Library. But the _Complete Works_ of De Quincey, in 16 volumes, edited by David Mason and published by A. & C. Black, should be in every library.

{273a} William Hazlitt never received the treatment he deserved until Mr. J. M. Dent issued in 1903 his _Collected Works_, in 13 volumes, edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover. Of cheap reprints of Hazlitt I commend _The Spirit of the Age_, _Winterslow_ and _Sketches and Essays_, three separate volumes of the World's Cla.s.sics (Frowde).

{273b} George Borrow's _Lavengro_ should only be read in Mr. John Murray's edition, as it there contains certain additional and valuable matter gathered from the original ma.n.u.script by William I. Knapp. The Library Edition of Borrow, in 6 volumes (Murray), may be particularly commended.

{273c} Emerson's _Complete Works_ are published by the Routledges in 4 volumes, in which _Representative Men_ may be found in Vol. II. Some may prefer the Eversley Library _Emerson_, which has an Introduction by John Morley. There are many cheap editions of about equal value.

{273d} Lander's _Imaginary Conversations_ form six volumes of the complete _Landor_, edited by Charles G. Crump, and published in 10 volumes by J. M. Dent.

{273e} Matthew Arnold's _Essays in Criticism_ is published by Macmillan.

It also forms Vol. III of the Library Edition of his _Works_ in 15 volumes. A "Second Series" has less significance.

{273f} _The Works of Herodotus_, published by the Macmillans, translated by George C. Macaulay, is the best edition for the general reader. Canon Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, published by John Murray, has had a longer life, but is now only published in an abridged form.

{274a} James Howell's _Familiar Letters_, or _Epistolae Ho Elianae_, should be read in the edition published in 2 volumes by David Nutt, with an Introduction by Joseph Jacobs.

{274b} _The History of Civilization_, by Henry Thomas Buckle, is in my library in the original 2 volumes published by Parker in 1857. It is now issued in 3 volumes in Longman's Silver Library, and in 3 volumes in the World's Cla.s.sics.

{274c} _The History of Tacitus_ should be read in the translation by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodripp. It is published by the Macmillans.

{274d} _Our Village_, by Mary Russell Mitford, is a collection of essays which in their completest form may be obtained in two volumes of Bohn's Library (Bell). The essential essays should be possessed in the edition published by the Macmillans--_Our Village_, by Mary Russell Mitford, with an Introduction by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and one hundred ill.u.s.trations by Hugh Thomson.

{274e} Green's _Short History of the English People_ is published by the Macmillans in 1 volume, or ill.u.s.trated in 4 volumes. The book was enlarged, but disimproved, under the t.i.tle of _A History of the English People_, in 4 volumes, uniform with the _Conquest of England_ and the _Making of England_ by the same author.

{275a} Taine's _Ancient Regime_ is a good introduction to the conditions which made the French Revolution. It forms the first volume of _Les Origines de la France Contemporaine_, and may be read in a translation by John Durand, published by Dalby, Isbister & Co. in 1877.

{275b} _The Life of Napoleon_ has been written by many pens, in our own day most competently by Dr. Holland Rose (2 vols. Bell); but a good account of the Emperor, indispensable for some particulars and an undoubted cla.s.sic, is that by de Bourrienne, Napoleon's private secretary, published in an English translation, in 4 volumes, by Bentley in 1836.

{275c} _Democracy in America_, by Alexis de Tocqueville, may be had in a translation by Henry Reeve, published in 2 volumes by the Longmans. Read also _A History of the United States_ by C. Benjamin Andrews, 2 volumes (Smith, Elder), and above all the _American Commonwealth_, by James Bryce, 2 volumes (Macmillan).

{275d} _The Compleat Angler_ of Isaac Walton may be purchased in many forms. I have a fine library edition edited by that prince of living anglers, Mr. R. B. Marston, called The Lea and Dove Edition, this being the 100th edition of the book (Sampson Low, 1888). I have also an edition edited by George A. B. Dewar, with an Introduction by Sir Edward Grey and Etchings by William Strang and D. Y. Cameron, 2 volumes (Freemantle), and a 1 volume edition published by Ingram & Cooke in the Ill.u.s.trated Library.

{276a} There are many editions of Gilbert White's _Natural History of Selbourne_ to be commended. Three that are in my library are (1) edited with an Introduction and Notes by L. C. Miall and W. Warde Fowler (Methuen); (2) edited with Notes by Grant Allen, ill.u.s.trated by Edmund H.

New (John Lane); (3) rearranged and cla.s.sified under subjects by Charles Mosley (Elliot Stock).

{276b} Of _Boswell's Life of Johnson_ there are innumerable editions.

The special enthusiast will not be happy until he possesses Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition in 6 volumes (Clarendon Press). The most satisfactory 1 volume edition is that published on thin paper by Henry Frowde. I have in my library also a copy of the first edition of _Boswell_ in 2 volumes.

It was published by Henry Baldwin in 1791.

{276c} The best edition of Lockhart's _Life of Scott_ is that published in 10 volumes by Jack of Edinburgh. Readers should beware of abridgments, although one of these was made by Lockhart himself. The whole eighty-five chapters are worth reading, even in the 1 volume edition published by A. & C. Black.

{276d} _Pepys's Diary_ can be obtained in Bohn's Library or in Newnes'

Thin Paper Cla.s.sics, but Pepys should only be read under Mr. H. B.

Wheatley's guidance. A cheap edition of his book, in 8 volumes, has recently been published by George Bell & Sons. I have No. 2 of the large paper edition of this book, No. 1 having gone to Pepys's own college of Brazenose, where the Pepys cypher is preserved.

{277a} Until recently one knew Walpole's _Letters_ only through Peter Cunningham's edition, in 9 volumes (Bentley), and this has still exclusive matter for the enthusiast, Cunningham's Introduction to wit; but the Clarendon Press has now published Walpole's _Letters_, edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, in 16 volumes, or in 8. Here are to be found more letters than in any previous edition.