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Table of Contents

Each of the nations, like each of the great eras of human progress, possesses definite characteristics of its own. Frenchmen differ from Englishmen in their faces, their customs, and also in intellectual trend. Shakespeare is unlike Ibsen not simply because he lived at an earlier date, in another epoch, but also because he was the native of another country. Kipling's point of view is not the same as that of Thomas Bailey Aldrich; their national traditions and surroundings varied sufficiently to leave a mark upon their work so legible that one is recognized as English and the other as American without need of referring to their biographies.

It is necessary, then, to have in mind the traits that individualize nations and races. For this reason the national characteristics are here set forth briefly, with lists of the principal authors of each country.

Greek Literature. An unequaled perception of beauty, with a love of symmetry and proportion: the reason and the feelings, the intellect and the emotions are perfectly blended. The powers of imagination and creation are highly trained, as well as the logical faculty, resulting in the perfection of skill and insight in epic poetry (Homer), tragedy (Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles), and philosophy (Plato).

POETRY

Cleanthes

Homer

Pindar

Sappho

Theocritus

FICTION

Æsop

HISTORY

Herodotus

Thucydides

BIOGRAPHY

Plato

Plutarch

DRAMA

Æschylus

Euripides

Sophocles

PHILOSOPHY

Epictetus

Plato

Latin Literature. The power of organization, with an ardor for law and order, combined with a genius for adapting and utilizing the best products of the nations which came under the Roman rule. This talent for adaptation and imitation stands in contrast to the Greek creative talent. Inasmuch as Rome's greatest literary works belong to a period four centuries after the best Greek production, it follows that the Roman authors profited not only by Greek achievement but also by the increased knowledge of the world due to the vast extension of the Roman Empire. Apart from this broader point of view, Latin authors borrowed method and style from the Greek; Vergil follows Homer and Theocritus, who was also imitated by Horace. Cicero and Seneca took both thought and style from Greek philosophers. In fact, Athens was the university at which all well-educated Romans had studied.

POETRY

Catullus

Horace

Ovid

Vergil

FICTION

Apuleius

HISTORY

Cæsar

Josephus[2] Livy Suetonius Tacitus

BIOGRAPHY

Pliny

PHILOSOPHY

Aurelius

Cicero

Lucretius

Seneca

English Literature. England's isolation as an island has enabled her to develop a national literature continuously for nine centuries with only the slightest interruption from the world without. Foreign ideas have been introduced, certainly, but by Englishmen instead of by foreigners. Where a slothful race would have lain dormant and inactive, the vigorous and adventurous islanders have even led the way in two fields of literary endeavor, for fiction and the essay reached their successive stages of growth more quickly in England than elsewhere. Throughout poetry and prose, with but few exceptions, there is a blend of shrewdness and inspiration which in daily life is called common sense; Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Browning continually sound the practical note, evincing their knowledge and appreciation of material affairs. Another trait is that of searching out the moral lessons in life and thought. "Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones" are constantly sought by English authors. Chaucer, Bunyan, Milton, Dickens, Carlyle, Browning, and many others from the forefront of English letters play the part of teacher and preacher again and again.

POETRY

Anglo-Saxon Literature

Arnold, M.

Blake

Browning, E. B.

Browning, R.

Burns

Byron

Chaucer

Clough

Coleridge

Dryden

Goldsmith

Gray

Henley

Keats

Kingsley

Macaulay

Milton

Morris, W.

Old English Ballads

Patmore

Pope

Rossetti, C.

Rossetti, D. G.

Scott

Shakespeare

Shelley

Sidney

Spenser

Swinburne

Tennyson

Wordsworth

FICTION

Austen

Barrie

Blackmore

Borrow

Brontë

Caine

Defoe

Dickens

Doyle

Eliot

Fielding

Gaskell

Goldsmith

Hardy

Hughes

Kingsley

Kipling

Lever

Lytton

Macdonald

Macleod

Malory

Meredith

Reade

Richardson

Scott

Stevenson

Swift

Thackeray

Watson

HISTORY

Carlyle

Creasy

Farrar

Freeman

Froissart

Froude

Gibbon

Gladstone

Green

Grote

Hodgkin

Holinshed

McCarthy

Mahaffy

Raleigh

Smith, G.

Symonds

BIOGRAPHY

Boswell

Chesterton

Evelyn

Lewes

Lockhart

Pepys

Southey

ESSAY

Addison

Arnold, M.

Bacon

Benson

De Quincey

Hamerton

Harrison

Hazlitt

Lamb

Lang

La Ramée

Macaulay

Milton

Morley

Pater

Ruskin

Sidney

Steele

Stephen

Stevenson

Thackeray

Walton

White, G.

HUMOR

Barham

Carroll

Cowper

Dickens

Gilbert

Hood

Hope

Jerrold

Sterne

Swift

Thackeray

TRAVEL

Hearn

Kinglake

Mandeville

Stevenson

Tyndall

DRAMA

Jonson

Marlowe

Shakespeare

Sheridan

ORATORY

Bright

Burke

SCIENCE &

PHILOSOPHY

Bacon

Carlyle

Darwin

Galton

Mill

More

Ruskin

Smith, A.

Spencer

RELIGION

Bonar

Bowring

Brierley

Browne, Sir T.

Cowper

Faber

Heber

Herbert

Hooker

Keble

Lyte

Milman

Newman

Robertson

Toplady

Watts

Wesley

Wyclif

American Literature. Obviously akin to English literature, yet more democratic in tone, owing to national tendencies, such as the character of the settlers, and the subsequent historical developments. Longfellow, Emerson, Whitman, and the other leading American authors wrote for the nation and not for any restricted class; the aristocratic note characteristic of much of eighteenth-century English literature is not to be found in American writers.

POETRY

Aldrich

Bryant

Emerson

Field

Holmes

Howe

Key

Lanier

Longfellow

Lowell

Morris, G. P.

Payne

Poe

Read

Riley

Smith, S. F.

Story

Taylor

Whitman

Whittier

Woodworth

FICTION

Aldrich

Cooper

Crawford

Hale

Harte

Hawthorne

Irving

Poe

Stowe

HISTORY

Bancroft

Fiske

Irving

McMaster

Motley

Parkman

Prescott

ESSAY

Emerson

Fields

Howells

Lowell

Mitchell

Thoreau

Warner

HUMOR

Browne, C. F.

Harris

Harte

Holmes

Irving

Lowell

TRAVEL

Audubon

Dana

Melville

ORATORY

Choate

Henry

Lincoln

Phillips

Sumner

Washington

Webster

SCIENCE &

PHILOSOPHY

Emerson

Hamilton

Shaler

RELIGION

Bowne

Brooks

Channing

Palmer

Sears

French Literature. A marked love of beauty, almost Greek in its nature, with a feeling for accuracy and organization which is decidedly Latin. These qualities have produced delicacy and clearness of expression; but their tendencies lead to perfection of style and form rather than to depth of thought, giving an effect of lightness and brilliance, and at times of superficiality.

POETRY

French Lit.

La Fontaine

Musset

Ronsard

Rouget de Lisle

Verlaine

Villon

FICTION

Balzac

Bernardin de

Saint-Pierre

Chateaubriand

Daudet

Dumas

Fénelon

Feuillet

French Lit.

Hugo

Laboulaye

Le Sage

Maupassant

Perrault

Zola

HISTORY

French Lit.

Guizot

Michelet

Taine

Voltaire

ESSAY

Montaigne

Sainte-Beuve

DRAMA

Molière

Racine

Rostand

PHILOSOPHY

Pascal

Rousseau

RELIGION

Bernard, St.

Bernard of Cluny

German Literature. Depth of thought and forceful expression, which are in part responsible for the complex character of the national style as opposed to the clarity of the French. Owing to the unsettled condition of Germany for many centuries, the arts in general, and literature especially, did not begin to flourish to a noteworthy degree until the eighteenth century. While Luther was the first great author to use the language in its present form, it was not until two centuries later that the next eminent writers, Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, appeared, whose work marks the highest point in the history of German letters.

POETRY

Arndt

German Lit.

Goethe

Heine

Schneckenburger

Uhland

FICTION

Fouqué

Grimm

Raspe

HISTORY

Mommsen

DRAMA

Lessing

Schiller

Goethe

PHILOSOPHY

Kant

Schopenhauer

RELIGION

à Kempis

Luther

Italian Literature. Emotional and imaginative rather than reflective, and therefore at its best in the brilliant and exuberant era of the Renaissance, which first came into full bloom in Italy.

POETRY

Dante

Jacopone

Michelangelo

Petrarch

Tasso

FICTION

Boccaccio

Manzoni

HISTORY

Ferrero

TRAVEL

& BIOG.

Cellini

Pellico

Polo

Villari

PHILOSOPHY

Machiavelli

RELIGION

Jacopone

Mazzini

Thomas of Celano

Spanish Literature. Marked by the dignity that is the predominating characteristic of the nation. Just as Spain has had but one brief period when she was supreme among the European nations, so she has produced but one supreme author, Cervantes. Her literature, for the most part, and notably at the present day, is imitative, behind rather than ahead of the times.

POETRY

Spanish Lit.

FICTION

Cervantes

DRAMA

Calderon

Scandinavian Literature. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are nations of the same race; their history, literature, and civilization are inseparably associated. Climate, racial character, historical developments, and other causes have combined to retard the growth of their literature. Apart from the sagas little of universal interest appeared until the nineteenth century, in which Ibsen created a sensation with his dramas of relentless criticism of the vanity and pettiness of life in the prosperous, democratic society of Norway.

POETRY

Ewald

Norse Lit.

FICTION

Andersen

Björnson

HISTORY

Norse Lit.

DRAMA

Ibsen

Russian Literature. In some respects more closely related to the East than to the West, and hampered by despotism until the twentieth century, Russia produced nothing of value until a century ago. The novelists mentioned below then began a series of vivid pictures of the struggle for freedom, knowledge, and civilization as opposed to tyranny, universal ignorance, and barbarism. Their work has a strong national flavor, coupled with a youthful energy and an enthusiasm for the mission of enlightenment that recalls the spirit of the Renaissance and its zeal for discovery and progress.

POETRY

Derzhavin

FICTION

Russian Lit.

Sienkiewicz

Tolstoi

Turgenieff

Oriental Literature. Arabia, Persia, India, China, and Japan live and think along lines utterly at variance with our mode of life. Their points of difference from each other are by no means as distinct as the radical contrast between their customs and ours. As we all know, Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left, so that a book's first page corresponds to the last page with us; in China and Japan people write down the page in vertical columns. Again, with us energy and activity, wisely used, form the basis of our life and our religion, whereas in the Orient it is held best to abstain from all action, to lead a life of absolute quiet and inactivity, if possible.

It follows that the literature of the East is first of all exceedingly difficult to translate well and in the second place is not to be judged in the same fashion as Western writings.

POETRY

Hafiz

Omar Khayyám

Sadi

FICTION

Arabian Nights

Jewish Lit.

HISTORY

Japanese Lit.

Josephus[3]

RELIGION

Confucius

Hindoo Lit.

Jewish Lit.

Mohammed