power of Dreiser's massive, coulter-like
impetus is evident. Here we realize how, between animal passion and
material ambition, there is little room left in such a nature as
Cooperwood's for any complicated subtlety. All is simple, direct, hard
and healthy--a very epitome and incarnation of the life-force, as it
manifests itself in America.

27. CERVANTES. DON QUIXOTE. _In any translation except those
vulgarized by eighteenth century taste_.

Cervantes' great, ironical, romantic story is written in a style so
noble, so nervous, so humane, so branded with reality, that, as the
wise critic has said, the mere touch and impact of it puts courage
into our veins. It is not necessary to read every word of this old
book. There are tedious passages. But not to have ever opened it; not
to have caught the tone, the temper, the terrible courage, the
infinite sadness of it, is to have missed being present at one of the
"great gestures" of the undying, unconquerable spirit of humanity.

28. VICTOR HUGO. THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. _In any translation_.

Victor Hugo is the greatest of all incorrigible romanticists.
Something between a prophet, a charlatan, a rhetorician, and a spoiled
child, he believes in God, in democracy, in innocence, in justice, and
he has a noble and unqualified devotion to human heroism and the
depths of the dangerous sea. He has that arbitrary, maniacal inventive
imagination which is very rare except in children--and in spite of his
theatrical gestures he has the power of conjuring up scenes of
incredible beauty and terror.

29. BALZAC. LOST ILLUSIONS. COUSIN BETTE. PERE GORIOT. HUMAN COMEDY,
_in any translation. Saintsbury's is as good as any_.

Balzac's books create a complete world, which has many points of
contact with reality; but, in a deep essential sense, is the
projection of the novelist's own passionate imagination. A thundering
tide of subterranean energy, furious and titanic, sweeps, with its
weight of ponderous details, through every page of these dramatic
volumes. Every character has its obsession, its secret vice, its
spiritual drug. Even when, as in the case of Vautrin, he lets his
demonic fancy carry him very far, there is a grandeur, an amplitude, a
smouldering flame of passion, which redeem a thousand preposterous
extravagances.

His dramatic psychology is often drowned in the tide of his creative
energy; but though his world is not always the world of our
experience, it is