这本《50 Classic essays：经典随笔50首》按全英文版出版，西方流行口袋本。共收集了马克吐温、伯特兰罗素、弗兰西斯培根、拉尔夫沃尔多爱默生、查尔斯兰姆、詹姆斯艾伦等众多西方文学名家的代表作与经典名篇，全书共50篇。读者可以通过书上指定的网址，通过微盘免费下载配套的英文朗读文件，边听边读，感受地道英语文学之乐趣。对于英语学习者来讲，这是一本优秀的英语文学精读手册。
This selection brings together fifty classics non-fictions, written by Henry David Thoreau, William Hazlitt, Francis Bacon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Allen, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Lamb, Bertrand Russel, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc,. It’s a treasure trove of fine writing and thought-provoking essays.
Spare some of your time reading it each day, you must benefit from the daily accumulation of English learning.
目錄：
01 ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS 001
02 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION:
“WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?” 004
03 THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE 013
04 BEFORE THE DIET OF WORMS 036
05 CATS 040
06 CHEESE 046
07 DARWIN’S VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 050
08 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 056
09 THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ENJOYMENT PRESENTED
BY THE CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE 061
10 DREAM-CHILDREN 064
11 THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 069
12 A FREE MAN’S WORSHIP 072
13 THE FUTURE OF ASTRONOMY 083
14 A GENERAL VIEW OF THEOSOPHY 100
15 GIFTS 104
16 HOW PAIN LEADS TO KNOWLEDGE AND POWER 109
17 THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 112
18 LINCOLN’S LAST HOURS 120
19 THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS 141
20 THE MEANING AND METHOD OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 146
21 MEDITATION 17 160
22 A MESSAGE TO GARCIA 163
23 A MODEST PROPOSAL 168
24 NEVER AGAIN! 179
25 NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 195
26 OF TRUTH 204
27 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION AND OTHER MATTERS 207
28 ON THE ART OF FICTION 212
29 ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 214
30 ON THE METHOD OF GRACE 227
31 ON THE PLEASURE OF TAKING UP ONE’S PEN 234
32 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 238
33 ON THE UNJUST CAUSES OF WAR 260
34 OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES 268
35 OUR FRIEND THE DOG 270
36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIRDS’ NESTS 285
37 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 304
38 THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN A LIBERAL EDUCATION 319
39 PUBLIC PRAYER 331
40 THE RHYTHM OF LIFE 337
41 THE SACREDNESS OF WORK 341
42 SELF-DENIAL NOT THE ESSENCE OF VIRTUE 342
43 SHOULD WOMEN BE BEAUTIFUL? 345
44 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC 352
45 THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT 1776 367
46 THE THREE KINDS OF MEN 377
47 TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE 382
48 TRUTH OF INTERCOURSE 384
49 WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 394
50 WHY ARE ALL MEN GAMBLERS? 408
內容試閱：
THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE
By Mark Twain
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a “unique”; and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, “Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions.” He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing “cases” where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain birdit is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody: “Where is the bird?” Now the answer to this questionaccording to the bookis that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, “Regen rain is masculineor maybe it is feminineor possibly neuterit is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der the Regen, or die the Regen, or das the Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very wellthen the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussionNominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something that is, resting which is one of the German grammar’s ideas of doing something, and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively,it is fallingto interfere with the bird, likelyand this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen.” Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop “wegen on account of den Regen.” Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word “wegen” drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequencesand that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop “wegen des Regens.”
N. B.I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an “exception” which permits one to say “wegen den Regen” in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speechnot in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionarysix or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seamthat is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of itafter which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verbmerely by way of ornament, as far as I can make outthe writer shovels in “haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein,” or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man’s signaturenot necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your headso as to reverse the constructionbut I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of the Parenthesis distemperthough they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novelwhich a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the readerthough in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best
way he can:
“But when he, upon the street, the in-satin-and-silk-coverednow- very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed government counselor’s wife met,” etc., etc.
That is from The Old Mamselle’s Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from the reader’s base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have
heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state.
……
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