A. Reading.
The aim of this part of the requirement is to foster in the student the
habit of intelligent reading and to develop a taste for good literature, by
giving him a first-hand knowledge of some of its best specimens. He should
read the books carefully, but his attention should not be so fixed upon
details that he fails to appreciate the main purpose and charm of what
he reads.
With a view to large freedom of choice, the books provided for reading
are arranged in the following groups, from each of which at least two
selections are to be made, except as otherwise provided under Group 1.
Classics in Translation.
Group 1: The Old Testament, comprising at least the chief narrative
episodes in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Daniel,
together with the books of Ruth and Esther; The Odyssey, with the omission,
if desired, of Books I, II, III, IV, V, XV, XVI, XVII; The Iliad,
with the omission, if desired, of Books XI, XIII, XIV, XV, XVII, XXI;
The Æneid. The Odyssey, Iliad, and Æneid should be read in English
translations of recognized literary excellence.
For any selection from this group a selection from any other group
may be substituted.
Shakespeare.
Group 2: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant
of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet,
King John, Richard II, Richard III, Henry V, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar,
Macbeth, Hamlet (if not chosen for study under B).
Prose Fiction.
Group 3: Malory's Morte d'Arthur (about 100 pages); Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress, Part I; Swift's Gulliver's Travels (voyages to Lilliput and
to Brobdingnag); Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Part I; Goldsmith's Vicar of
Wakefield; Frances Burney's Evelina; any one of Scott's Novels; any
one of Jane Austen's Novels; Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, or The
Absentee; any one of Dickens' Novels; any one of Thackeray's Novels:
any one of George Eliot's Novels; Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford; Kingsley's
Westward Ho! or Hereward, the Wake; Reade's The Cloister and the
Hearth; Blackmore's Lorna Doone; Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays;
Stevenson's Treasure Island, or Kidnapped, or Master of Ballantrae; any
one of Cooper's Novels; a selection of Poe's Tales; Hawthorne's The House
of the Seven Gables; or Twice-Told Tales, or Mosses from an Old Manse; a
collection of Short Stories by various standard writers.
Essays, Biography, Etc.
Group 4: Addison and Steele's The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, or
selections from the Tatler and Spectator (about 200 pages); selections
from Boswell's Life of Johnson (about 200 pages); Franklin's Autobiography;
selections from Irving's Sketch Book (about 200 pages), or his Life
of Goldsmith; Southey's Life of Nelson; selections from Lamb's Essays of
Elia (about 100 pages); selections from Lockhart's Life of Scott (about
200 pages); Thackeray's lectures on Swift, Addison, and Steele in the English
Humorists; any one of the following essays of Macaulay: Lord Clive,
Warren Hastings, Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Frederick the Great, Madame
d'Arblay; selections from Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay (about 200 pages);
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, or selections from Ruskin's works (about 150
pages); Dana's Two Years Before the Mast; selections from Lincoln's works,
including at least the two Inaugurals, the Speeches in Independence Hall
and at Gettysburg, the Last Public Address, the Letter to Horace Greeley,
together with a brief memoir or estimate of Lincoln; Parkman's The Oregon
Trail; Thoreau's Walden; selections from Lowell's essays (about 150
pages); Holmes' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; Stevenson's An
Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey; Huxley's Autobiography and
selections from Lay Sermons, including the addresses on Improving Natural
Knowledge, A Liberal Education, and A Piece of Chalk; a collection of
Essays by Bacon, Lamb, DeQuincey, Hazlitt, Emerson and later writers;
a collection of Letters by various standard writers.
Poetry.
Group 5: Palgrave's Golden Treasury (First Series), Books II and
III, with special attention to Dryden, Collins, Gray, Cowper, and Burns;
Palgrave's Golden Treasury (First Series), Book IV, with special attention
to Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley (if not chosen for study under B);
Goldsmith's The Traveller and The Deserted Village; Pope's The Rape of
the Lock; a collection of English and Scottish Ballads, as, for example,
some Robin Hood ballads, The Battle of Otterburn, King Estmere, Young
Beichan, Bewick, and Grahame, Sir Patrick Spens, and a selection from
later ballads; Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla
Khan; Byron's Childe Harold, Canto III or IV, and The Prisoner of Chillon;
Scott's The Lady of the Lake, or Marmion; Macaulay's The Lays of
Ancient Rome, The Battle of Naseby, The Armada, Ivry; Tennyson's The
Princess, or Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, and Passing of
Arthur; Browning's Cavalier Tunes, The Lost Leader, How They Brought
the Good News from Ghent to Aix, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Home
Thoughts from the Sea, Incident of the French Camp, Hervé Riel, Pheidippides,
My Last Duchess, Up at a Villa—Down in the City, The Italian in
England, The Patriot, The Pied Piper, "De Gustibus," Instans Tyrannus;
Arnold's
Sohrab and Rustum, and
The Forsaken Merman; selections from
American poetry, with special attention to Poe, Lowell, Longfellow, and
Whittier.
