作为大学时期兼职过xdf英文教师的资深文学爱好者，推荐一些私藏的英文散文。
Sir Thomas Browne（托马斯·布朗爵士）的散文名篇“On Dreams”（《关于梦》）。试读第一段：Half our dayes wee passe in the shadowe of the earth, and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. A good part of our sleepes is peeced out with visions, and phantasticall objects wherin wee are confessedly deceaved. The day supplyeth us with truths, the night with fictions and falsehoods, which uncomfortably divide the natural account of our beings. And therefore having passed the day in sober labours and rationall enquiries of truth, wee are fayne to betake ourselves unto such a state of being, wherin the soberest heads have acted all the monstrosities of melancholy, and which unto open eyes are no better then folly and madnesse.
推荐原因：这是一个典型的拉丁文功底深厚的人才能写出来的曼妙英文。文法方面，长句写得极好，好像春蚕吐丝，织体精严。内容方面，构思幽默，文思新颖，富有知性。音韵方面，句子虽长却又有十足的呼吸感，且用韵恰当，不肥不瘦，有回味却不油腻。适合大声朗读。GRE、LSAT绝佳写作阅读教材。
他的“Hydriotaphia”（《瓮葬》）也非常不错。共推荐这两篇。
2. King James Bible（《圣经》英王钦定本）里的Ecclesiastes（《传道书》）。试读第十二节：
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern。 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it。 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity。
推荐理由：单论文学性，《圣经》英王钦定本是最上乘的英文散文。它和托马斯·布朗的散文是两种截然相反的风格，完全不像布朗的拉丁化的英文那样，句法复杂，好比小径分岔的溪流；它的句子很简单，却充满盎格鲁撒克逊英文的阳刚的力量美。读《圣经》的文字，你会发现原来克制力也是一种力。尤其推荐《传道书》一册。
3. Thomas De Quincey（托马斯·德·昆西）的Confessions of an English Opium-Eater（《一个英格兰鸦片吸食者的自白》）。试读一段：
The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm: a tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.
推荐理由：牛津大学历史上最桀骜不驯的青年才子，三教九流无所不交。中国有龚自珍，日本有三岛由纪夫，英国有德·昆西。想知道什么是正统的牛津英文？读他就行。
4. Robert Louis Stevenson（罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森）的Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde（《化身博士》）的其中一段：
It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-colored pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the black end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare.
推荐理由：看史蒂文森对色彩、雾气、光线的描写，实在赏心悦目。读完这段，每个人脑海里都能画出一幅莫奈的《日出印象》。
5. Sylvia Townsend Warner（希薇亚·汤森·华娜）的Lolly Willowes（好像没有中文译本面世）的其中一段：
It was not beauty at all that she wanted, or depressed though she was, she would have bought a ticket to somewhere or other upon the Metropolitan railway and gone out to see the recumbent autumnal graces of the country-side. Her mind was groping after something that eluded her experience, a something that was shadowy and menacing, and yet in some way congenial; a something that lurked in waste places, that was hinted at by the sound of water gurgling through deep channels and by the voices of birds of ill-omen. Loneliness, dreariness, aptness for arousing a sense of fear, a kind of ungodly hallowedness—these were the things that called her thoughts away from the comfortable fireside.
推荐理由：华娜绝对是英国女性作家里的一颗遗珠。她的文笔继承了简·奥斯汀的含蓄讽刺，又有乔治·艾略特那种成熟和世故，兼有伍尔芙那种对女性心理的精微刻画。而且题材和思想上，她是一位真正意义上的女权主义作家。我打赌，这样一位优秀女性作家的时代一定会到来。
6. J. A. Baker（贝克）的The Peregine（《游隼》，没有中文译本）。试读一段：
The valley sinks into mist, and the yellow orbital ring of the horizon closes over the glaring cornea of the sun. The eastern ridge blooms purple, then fades to inimical black. The earth exhales into the cold dusk. Frost forms in hollows shaded from the afterglow. Owls wake and call. The first stars hover and drift down. Like a roosting hawk, I listen to the silence and gaze into the dark.
推荐理由：自然科学散文的典范。1967年Duff Cooper奖得主。这个奖项的含金量不亚于普利策。贝克喜欢观察鸟类，把自己在户外观鸟的经历写成散文集《游隼》。如果你喜欢自然、动物、地理，那你一定喜欢这部优美的、知性、感性兼具的散文集。这部散文集在英美卖得很好，国内似乎还没引进。绝对的宝藏。
7. Patrick Leigh Fermor（帕特里克·莱斯·弗莫尔）的Between the Woods and the Water（没有中文译本）
Scattered with poppies, the golden-green waves of the cornfields faded. The red sun seemed to tip one end of a pair of scales below the horizon, and simultaneously to lift an orange moon at the other. Only two days off the full, it rose behind a wood, swiftly losing its flush as it floated up, until the wheat loomed out of the twilight like a metallic and prickly sea.
弗莫尔是爱尔兰裔英国散文家，旅行家，居然还是位二战英雄。英国版的徐霞客，用双腿丈量欧洲。他在描写自然美景时，总会给出一般人想象不到的比喻，文字的感官体验非常丰富。各位如果去欧洲旅游，可以带上他的散文集。
8. Vladimir Nabokov（弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫）的Speak, Memory（《说吧，记忆》）
I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle bell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black stratus, the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the square parts of this or any other sunset. It occupied a very small sector of the enormous sky and had the peculiar neatness of something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There it lay in wait, a family of serene clouds in miniature, an accumulation of brilliant convolutions, anachronistic in their creaminess and extremely remote; remote but perfect in every detail; fantastically reduced but faultlessly shaped; my marvelous tomorrow ready to be delivered to me.
推荐理由：好的英文散文一定有很强的视觉效果。纳博科夫的英文散文亦是如此。读过他英文的，都会感叹这个人的脑子一定是4k高清的网盘，什么画面都能精确地用文字还原出来。《说吧，记忆》是纳博科夫的《追忆似水年华》，自传性质的散文集，非常推荐阅读。
先推荐到这里。这里每一篇文章都是我以往阅读经验里精选出来的，希望对你们有帮助。如果觉得不错，请帮我点赞关注追更，后续我会更新更多优秀的英文散文供大家欣赏。谢谢！
