Chaucer is excellt

HP and TC

We didn't know who Sir Henry Parkes was until today when across our desk came his 1892 memoirs Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History. We dipped into these memoirs after some cursory online research and learned that before he became the Father of Federation, before he had the magnificent beard that graces the AU$5 note, Parkes made an extended visit to England where he became an intimate of Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Carlyle.

In 1862 Parkes was 46. He had several failed business ventures behind him, but was beginning to get on in Australian politics. Carlyle, twenty years his senior, cranky with the proofs of Frederick the Great, had warmed up to him socially but was nevertheless a fierce conversationalist. Parkes had recently published a small collection of poems which he thought of giving to Carlyle, but in the end he hadn't the nerve. He presented them instead to Jane Carlyle.

Parkes reports in his memoirs -- and now we are getting to the point of this post -- that on one occasion, ever the auto-didact and self-improver, he asked the Sage of Chelsea for some bookish advice:

'I have sometimes thought that it would be a good thing for a man like me-- imperfectly educated and with many things always pressing upon his time, to put aside all books, save ten or twelve authors, and thoroughly master them. In such case, what authors would you suggest?' He made some curt observations which I interpreted as unfavourable, and I felt half ashamed of what I had said. When I called again he said, 'I have jotted down some books for you, if you carry out your plan of studying a few authors,' and he fetched me the list written in pencil on a torn sheet of paper.

Here is the list which Parkes received:

[obverse large] [reverse large]

My faithful transcription:

List of books given to me
by Thomas Carlyle which he recommended
me to buy HP.

--------------------------------------

Pope's Works
Swift's Works (Gulliver, Battle of Books)
L^d Hailes's Annals of Scotland [i.e. David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes]
Camden's Britannia (Philemon
     Holland's translation, 1 vol 4^to
     costs ab^t 12/.., date ab^t 1620-1630)
Heimskringla (or History of the Norse Kings;^{Sea Kings}
     Laing's translatⁿ, 3 vols. 8vo)-
Anson's Voyage (excell^t); Byrons Narrative (good).
Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield
Smollett's Humphrey Clinker
     }Richardson, Fielding
     &c. if you like such
     things
Arabⁿ Tales; Don Quixote
Franklin's Essays & Autobiography.
Sheraton's Works
Boswell's Life of Johnson
----Journey to Western Isles.
Plutarch's Lives (editⁿ revised
by Clough, ^Boston America 7 or 8 yrs [?]
ago, is far the best)

--------------------------------------
[reverse]

Fuller's Worthies of Engl^d (i.e.
     Notabilia of Engl^d: tolerably good)
Chaucer (& make the young ones
     learn to read him) is excell^t.

Parkes comments: "I doubt if many persons would adopt this selection of books, famous as was the selector, and excellent as many of the works undoubtedly are..." But he treasured the list enough to keep it for thirty years and to have a facsimile tipped into Fifty Years.