THE CELESTIAL SURGEON ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [For biographical sketch see page 112.] IF I have faltered more or less And to my dead heart run them in! STUDY HINTS Does Stevenson consider his task one merely of being happy himself, or also of making others happy? What lines prove your opinion? What are some of the things that he thinks should cause happiness? Would you find it in the same things? It is the idea of this poem, which he held during years of ill health, that has made Stevenson beloved of so many readers. SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL READINGS Read Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verse and see how many forms of happiness he shows in those poems. Can you find a similar idea in The Tomb of Tusitala, by Stevenson? "Tusitala," "teller of tales," was the name given Stevenson by the South Sea Islanders whom he used to entertain with his stories. THE GAME OF LIFE 1 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), the famous scientist, was born in England in the little village of Ealing near London. He began as early as 1855 lecturing in simple language to workingmen on the laws of nature and man's place in nature. He was a close student of nature throughout his long life. His lectures and publications on this subject in both America and England won for him in 1883 the presidency of the famous Royal Society, which was the highest honor in the gift of the scientific world. His ideal was to be in work and life absolutely sincere. See also: Huxley's Autobiography. Huxley's Collected Essays, Vol. I. Excerpt Thomas Henry Huxley, by Edward Clodd (in Modern English Writers). SUPPOSE it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? (Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely 1 From A Liberal Education and Where to Find It (1868). I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, and that compulsorily, and every day of the week. Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of my own election, but my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse,' about once a year: and to that discipline - patient, accurate, and resolute-I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take Johnson's 2 English, or Gibbon's, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of First Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial or formal English. 3 What authors does he value of his early train What instances of humor do you find? specially mention? What is his opinion of the ing? Do you think that his opinion is correct? Aside from the subject matter, what else did Ruskin learn in reading the Bible? How did he acquire a vocabulary? Which of the books that he read are you suffi 1 The Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a noted converser and writer, who loved long words derived from the Latin. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, who was also fond of words of Latin origin. ciently familiar with to give some of their general characteristics? How many of the same books did Abraham Lincoln (p. 258) and Ruskin read early in life? SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL READINGS Read from the Bible: The Story of Creation; The Story of Abraham; The Story of David; The Story of Samson; The Story of Ruth; Daniel in the Lions' Den; The Description of the New Jerusalem (Revelation, xxi, xxii). Read from Pope's or Bryant's translation of Homer's Odyssey: Ulysses (Odysseus) and Calypso (Book v); The Lotus-Eaters and the Cyclops (Book ix); Æolus and Circe (Book x); The Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis (Book xii). Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. (Note the Biblical simplicity of his style.) Franklin's Autobiography (the first twenty-five pages). Ruskin's The King of the Golden River and Sesame and Lilies, Lecture II. (The part relating to Shakespeare.) SATAN JOHN MILTON John Milton (1608-1674) was born in London, England. He is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest English poet. This description of Satan is taken from the sublimest epic in the English language, Paradise Lost. Milton was totally blind at the time he produced this, so that he was obliged to dictate it to his daughters. It was a tremendous task, for the epic embraces twelve books. Milton has exerted great influence upon English poetry and prose. See also: Halleck's New English Literature, pp. 238-252, 255. Pattison's Milton. Raleigh's Milton. Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Masson's The Life of John Milton. [In the poem, Satan led a host of rebellious angels against God and was cast out of heaven. He then set up a kingdom in the “infernal world."] FAREWELL, happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal world!1 and thou, profoundest hell, Receive thy new possessor one who brings 5 A mind not to be changed by place or time. 1 Lower world. ΙΟ |