nty volumes, more than half of which
are historical, and nearly all, as it seems, in French. The ancient
historians comprised in the list are Thucydides, Plutarch, Polybius,
Arrian, Tacitus, Livy, and Justin. The poets are Homer, Virgil, Tasso,
Ariosto, the _Telemaque_ of Fenelon, the _Henriade_ of Voltaire, with
Ossian and La Fontaine. Among the works of prose fiction are the English
novelists in forty volumes, of course in translations, and the
indispensable _Sorrows of Werter_, which, as he himself told Goethe,
Napoleon had read through seven times prior to October, 1808. In this list
the Bible, together with the _Koran_ and the _Vedas_, are whimsically, but
significantly, entered under the heading Politics and Ethics (Politique et
Morale).[8]

Napoleon was not, however, satisfied with the camp libraries which were
provided for him; the good editions were too bulky and the small editions
too mean: so he arranged the plan of a library to be expressly printed for
him in a thousand duodecimo volumes without margins, bound in thin covers
and with loose backs. "In this new plan 'Religion' took its place as the
first class. The Bible was to be there in its best translation, with a
selection of the most important works of the Fathers of the Church, and a
series of the best dissertations on those leading religious sects--their
doctrines and their history--which have powerfully influenced the world.
This section was limited to forty volumes. The Koran was to be included,
together with a good book or two on mythology. One hundred and forty
volumes were allotted to poetry. The epics were to embrace Homer, Lucan,
Tasso, _Telemachus_, and the _Henriade_. In the dramatic portion Corneille
and Racine were of course to be included, but of Corneille, said Napoleon,
you shall print for me 'only what is vital' (ce qui est reste), and from
Racine you shall omit '_Les Freres ennemis_, the _Alexandre_, and _Les
Plaideurs_. Of Crebillon, he would have only _Rhadamiste_ and _Atree et
Thyeste_. Voltaire was to be subject to the same limitation as
Corneille.'"[9] In prose fiction Napoleon specifies the _Nouvelle Heloise_
and Rousseau's _Confessions_, the masterpieces of Fielding, Richardson and
Le Sage, and Voltaire's tales. Soon after this Napoleon proposed a much
larger scheme for a camp library, in which history alone would occupy
three thousand volumes. History was to be divided into these sections--I.
Chronology and Universal History. II.