11. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. RELIGIO MEDICI AND URN BURIAL. _In the "Scott
Library" Series_.


The very spirit of ancient Norwich, the mellowest and most historic of
all English cities, breathes in these sumptuous and aromatic pages.
After Lamb and Pater, both of whom loved him well, Browne is the
subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be
enjoyed in our language. Not to catch the cadences of his peculiar
music is to confess oneself deaf to the finer harmonies of words.


12. GOETHE. FAUST, _translated in English Poetry by Bayard Taylor_.
WILHELM MEISTER, _in Carlyle's translation_. GOETHE'S CONVERSATIONS
WITH ECKERMAN, _translation in Bohn's Library_.

No other human name, except Da Vinci's, carries the high associations
of oracular and occult wisdom as far as Goethe's does. He hears the
voices of "the Mothers" more clearly than other men and in heathen
loneliness he "builds up the pyramid of his existence."

The deep authority of his formidable insight can be best enjoyed, not
without little side-lights of a laconic irony, in the "Conversations";
while in Wilhelm Meister we learn to become adepts in the art of
living in the Beautiful and True, in Faust that abysmal doubt as to
the whole mad business of life is undermined with a craft equal to his
own in the delineation and defeat of "the queer son of Chaos."