The Hundred Best Books

769

THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS

FIRST there's the Bible,

And then the Koran,
Odgers on Libel,

Pope's Essay on Man,
Confessions of Rousseau,

The Essays of Lamb,
Robinson Crusoe

And Omar Khayyam,
Volumes of Shelley

And Venerable Bede,
Machiavelli

And Captain Mayne Reid,

Fox upon Martyrs

And Liddell and Scott,
Stubbs on the Charters,

The works of La Motte,
The Seasons by Thomson,
And Paul de Verlaine,
Theodore Mommsen

And Clemens (Mark Twain),
The Rocks of Hugh Miller,

The Mill on the Floss,

The Poems of Schiller,

The Iliados,

Don Quixote (Cervantes),

La Pucelle by Voltaire,
Inferno (that's Dante's),
And Vanity Fair,
Conybeare-Howson,
Brillat-Savarin,

And Baron Munchausen,

Mademoiselle De Maupin,

The Dramas of Marlowe,

The Three Musketeers,

Clarissa Harlowe,

And the Pioneers,

Sterne's Tristram Shandy,

The Ring and the Book,

And Handy Andy,

And Captain Cook,
The Plato of Jowett,
And Mill's Pol. Econ.,
The Haunts of Howitt,
The Encheiridion,
Lothair by Disraeli,
And Boccaccio,
The Student's Paley,

And Westward Ho!
The Pharmacopoeia,
Macaulay's Lays,
Of course The Medea,
And Sheridan's Plays,
The Odes of Horace,

And Verdant Green,
The Poems of Morris,

The Faery Queen, The Stones of Venice,

Natural History (White's),

And then Pendennis,

The Arabian Nights,

Cicero's Orations,

Plain Tales from the Hills,

The Wealth of Nations,

And Byles on Bills, As in a Glass Darkly, Demosthenes' Crown,

The Treatise of Berkeley,

Tom Hughes's Tom Brown,

The Mahabharata,

The Humour of Hook,

The Kreutzer Sonata,

And Lalla Rookh,

Great Battles by Creasy,

And Hudibras,

And Midshipman Easy,

And Rasselas, Shakespeare in extenso

And the Eneid,

And Euclid (Colenso),

The Cosmic Egg

The Woman who Did,
Poe's Tales of Mystery,

Then Rabelais,
Guizot's French History,

And Men of the Day,
Rienzi, by Lytton,

The Poems of Burns,
The Story of Britain,

The Journey (that's Sterne's),

The House of Seven Gables,

Carroll's Looking-glass,
Esop his Fables,

And Leaves of Grass,
Departmental Ditties,

The Woman in White,

The Tale of Two Cities,

Ships that Pass in the Night,
Meredith's Feverel,

Gibbon's Decline,

Walter Scott's Peveril,

And some verses of mine.

771

Mostyn T. Pigott.

THE COSMIC EGG

UPON a rock, yet uncreate,
Amid a chaos inchoate,
An uncreated being sate;
Beneath him, rock,
Above him, cloud.

And the cloud was rock,

And the rock was cloud.

The rock then growing soft and warm,
The cloud began to take a form,
A form chaotic, vast and vague,
Which issued in the cosmic egg.
Then the Being uncreate
On the egg did incubate,
And thus became the incubator;

And of the egg did allegate,
And thus became the alligator;
And the incubator was potentate,
But the alligator was potentator.

Unknown.

FIVE WINES

BRISK methinks I am, and fine
When I drink my cap'ring wine;
Then to love I do incline,
When I drink my wanton wine;
And I wish all maidens mine,
When I drink my sprightly wine;
Well I sup and well I dine,
When I drink my frolic wine;
But I languish, lower, and pine,
When I want my fragrant wine.

Robert Herrick.

A RHYME FOR MUSICIANS

HÄNDEL, Bendel, Mendelssohn,
Brendel, Wendel, Jadassohn,
Müller, Hiller, Heller, Franz,
Plothow, Flotow, Burto, Ganz.

Meyer, Geyer, Meyerbeer,

Heyer, Weyer, Beyer, Beer,

Lichner, Lachner, Schachner, Dietz,

Hill, Will, Brüll, Grill, Drill, Reiss, Rietz.

Hansen, Jansen, Jensen, Kiehl,

Siade, Gade, Laade, Stiehl,

Naumann, Riemann, Diener, Wurst,

Niemann, Kiemann, Diener, Furst.

My Madeline! my Madeline!

Mark my melodious midnight moans;
Much may my melting music mean,
My modulated monotones.

My mandolin's mild minstrelsy,
My mental music magazine,
My mouth, my mind, my memory,
Must mingling murmur "Madeline!"

Muster 'mid midnight masquerades,

Mark Moorish maidens, matrons' mien; 'Mongst Murcia's most majestic maids, Match me my matchless Madeline.

Mankind's malevolence may make

Much melancholy musing mine; Many my motives may mistake, My modest merits much malign.

My Madeline's most mirthful mood
Much mollifies my mind's machine,
My mournfulness's magnitude.

Melts make me merry, Madeline!

Match-making mas may machinate,
Manoeuvring misses me mis-ween ;
Mere money may make many mate,
My magic motto's "Madeline!"