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  ...will venture, at the risk of inditing a list of old primers and grammars, to count the few books which a superficial reader must thankfully use.
Of the old Greek books, I think there are five which we cannot spare:-- 1. Homer, who, in spite of Pope, and all the learned uproar of centuries, has really the true fire, and is good for simple minds, is the true and adequate germ of Greece, and occupies that place as history, which nothing can supply. It holds through all literature, that Our best history is still poetry.   It is so in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, and in Greek. English history is best known through Shakspeare; how much through Merlin, Robin Hood, and the Scottish ballads! the German, through the Nibelungen Lied; the Spanish, through the Cid. Of Homer, George Chapman's is the heroic translation, though the most literal prose version is the best of all.--2. Herodotus, whose history contains inestimable anecdotes, which brought it with the learned into a sort of disesteem; but in these days, when it...   Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Excerpt from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 3, January, 1858 · This quote is about history and historians · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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