Copeland: The Man and His Book

...They have learned to relate fiction and poetry to the practical task of becoming men...

...Perhaps that is why many Harvard students, in the passing years, have found that they received from "Copey" more than a mere love of reading, more than the initiation into the mysteries of literature itself...

...For although you will find between its covers the writings of 162 authors (more, if you count the multiple authorship of the Bible) it is inseparably a part of the man who compiled it and even more, to many of us, it is the sound of his voice...

...They are not intended to be, and could never become, a composite biography of English writers...

...Copeland means much more to the Harvard men who have known him than any writing of his own, and more, even, than this present book which is so much his own...

...They have always contained the dual seeds of action, carrying you in sound, it is true, beyond the exhausting strife of humdrum, but implanting as well the sturdy force of ideas and the incentive to stouter deeds...

...One instrument to this end is well-directed reading...

...Then comes English literature proper, with omissions as conspicuous as selections...

...Some writing is born of observation, finding its extremes in morbid realism and its highest virtue in the vivid etching of character and the externals of a time...

...But why labor an obvious point...

...For in his own speech and in his way with men, Copeland carries out the same principles that guide him in his choice of "readings...

...Each selection is self-contained...

...a great deal of Wordsworth and Scott, less than a page and a half from Pope, seven pages of Byron as against twenty-two of Shelley and still more of Tennyson...

...This is the same instinct for the fine literature of great quests which Arthur Machen describes so lucidly in Hieroglyphics...

...Perhaps because Thackeray belongs essentially to this school, Copeland can say, in selecting his best books, "Thackeray is easy...

...But when Dickens launched into Pickwick, he joined the ranks of the great literary adventurers, whose lineage dates back to the Odyssey, 715 and continues through the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, and the other epics of search...

...Like Pickwick, he has never been afraid to say, "You're a humbug, sir...

...With all too many, reading never becomes much more than aesthetic gluttony...

...Each provides entertainment and stimulus rather than mere edification...

...Moreover, they have each and all withstood the pragmatic test of reading...

...Recall, if you like, that on this day Mr...

...To Copeland it has been given to re-create literature, and in so doing, to make life-giving words become part of the reality and the fine deeds of an entire generation...

...And in the American section we find five pages of Longfellow to fifty-six of Poe and half a page of Bryant...

...But it is part of his genius, whenever, possible, to make a young man find out so unpleasant a truth for himself...

...They have captured from * The Copeland Reader: An Anthology of English Poetry and Prose, chosen and edited by Charles Townsend Copeland, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in Harvard University...

...Each comes within the border-lands of literature...

...And following this profession of literary faith, I like to think that it is again more than accident that impelled Copeland to give us as one example of the Pickwick idea that chapter devoted to Mr...

...It left you imbued with a sense of reality wed to dreams, invigorated, stimulated to further discovery in the meanings of life itself...

...Pickwick, in the full glow of discovery, thereupon exposed the alpha and omega of his own character...

...Nowhere in its pages will you find a line that "Copey" has not read aloud, whether in Sever Hall, or at the less historic Harvard Union, at some one of the Harvard Clubs throughout the country, at Radcliffe College, or perhaps under the reading lamp, late at night, in his own room, surrounded by a few men who hold his friendship among their richest possessions...

...Surely it is no mere whim of the moment which makes Copeland announce his preference for The Pickwick Papers as Dickens's best book...

...It is given to some men to create great literature...

...Thackeray is dismissed, as one might suspect, with some thirty-five pages, while Dickens receives nearly ninety, and Robert Browning fifty-five...

...and, beckoning his friend to approach, fixed a searching look upon him, and uttered in a low, but distinct and emphatic tone, these remarkable words—'You're a humbug, sir.' " There stands, in all his ridiculous trappings, the eternal leader of men, the dealer of the honest word in the manner of charity...

...They have caught through the ear the living beauty of words...

...Winkle, declaring himself "rather out of practice," betrayed the full depth of his bluff...

...And so it has always happened that a Copeland reading left with you more than words...

...Pickwick's day on the ice...

...It is no secret of the Harvard Yard that many a youngster has "found himself" after a quiet conference, late at night, in "Copey's" room...

...In its 1,650 odd pages—brought into one convenient volume through the use of India paper—you can find, not so much a survey of literature in the English language, as the manifold expressions of Copeland's own and very catholic taste...

...that Mr...

...The Copeland Reader, then, is vastly more than an anthology...

...And, as Copeland has said of Dean Shaler, "a man is always better than a book...

...New York: Charles Scribner's Sons...

...For Copeland has never been known to read sterile words...

...It is not enough to qualify merely as fine writing...

...It is as much the personal reflection of Professor Copeland as the furnishings and arrangement of the rooms in which he lives...

...You will find generous selections from the Old and New Testaments, passages from Homer, and the death of Socrates by Plato...

...With those who have learned to read under "Copey," reading has become an instrument of finer living...

...The selections represent personal liking, not a cross-section of literature...

...But in so far as The Copeland Reader will help to transmit even a part of the man who has shaped and influenced so many lives, to that point will it enhearten his countless friends...

...the man himself something of the meaning hiding within those words—a revelation which, it seems, must be born anew in each human soul, that words clothe the mystery of both reality and dreams, uniting them in a new mystery which impels us toward achievement...

...To many, mounting undoubtedly to thousands, the sound of Copeland's reading voice has proved the summons to their first quest for the joy of English poetry and prose...

...The Critic, by Sheridan, represents sufficiently well for Copeland the Restoration spirit...

...You will not find him burdening you with Congreve, for example...

...Great literature in a paragraph...

...No Chaucer, for example...

...For his own writings have been as meagre as they are inadequate to convey his total personality...

...They have received the knowledge of how to make reading serve an important end in their lives...

...It is more than a selfish pleasure which former students and friends of Professor Copeland will extract from this book—more than a pleasant personal reminder of evenings spent in "Copey's" study or before his reading desk...

...Within these pages you can read the biography of "Copey's" mind...

...They have felt a lingering regret for many years that nothing but a personal tradition would survive Copeland himself...

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...This book gives, indirectly, the heart and soul of the man himself...

...He "retired a few paces apart from the bystanders...