Show authors one should know it if you were asked to choose ten authors a partial knowledge ot of whose works you regarded as essential to the equipment ot of a successful modern man what authors would you name this question recently put to five representative men in new york chosen at random produced the follow ing results I 1 homer plato dante goethe vol taire balzac shakespeare carlyle matthew arnold and emerson 2 james bryce american corn com mon wealth dickens kipling mark twain robert louis stevenson woodrow wilson popular history julea jules verne howells H G wells anticipations and ridpath Rid paths s his tory of the world 3 shakespeare plato cervantes moliere mollere gibbon goethe 13 emerson merson motley thackeray tolstoi 4 shakespeare boswells boswelll Bo swells john son plutarch s lives emling a 4 history of the Buccan hamil ton s memoirs of gramont diary bourhenne Dour Bour lenne s napoleon gibbon 0 rome greens green s history of england john fiskes united states Ill histories stories 5 shakespeare kipling howells dumas senior mark twain ruskin john fiske riske darwin tyndal tenny tenor son or robert browning As was to have been expected lespeare figures in most ot of the hits lits only one ono leaving him out plato goethe Din emerson ersan gibbon and john fiske are the choice in two lists and howells kipling and mark twain among the living writers each ban hall two adherents altogether thirty eight authors are mentioned in the rye lists |