Of his gentleness,Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me,From mine own library with volumes thatI prize above my dukedom.W. Shakespeare.The Tempest.
Of his gentleness,Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me,From mine own library with volumes thatI prize above my dukedom.
W. Shakespeare.The Tempest.
Here, duly placed on consecrated ground,The studied works of many an age are found,The ancient Fathers' reverend remains;The Roman Laws, which freed a world from chains;Whate'er of law passed from immortal GreeceTo Latin lands, and gained a rich increase;All that blessed Israel drank in showers from heaven,Or Afric sheds, soft as the dew of even.Alcuin.
Here, duly placed on consecrated ground,The studied works of many an age are found,The ancient Fathers' reverend remains;The Roman Laws, which freed a world from chains;Whate'er of law passed from immortal GreeceTo Latin lands, and gained a rich increase;All that blessed Israel drank in showers from heaven,Or Afric sheds, soft as the dew of even.
Alcuin.
The Doctor with himself decreedTo nod—or, much the same, to read.He always seemed a wondrous loverOf painted leaf and Turkey cover,While no regard at all was hadTo sots in homely russet clad,Concluding he must be withinA calf, that wore without his skin.But, though his thoughts were fixed to read,The treatise was not yet decreed:Uncertain to devote the dayTo politics or else to play;What theme would best his genius suit,Grave morals or a dull dispute,Where both contending champions boastThe victory which neither lost;As chiefs are oft in story readEach to pursue, when neither fled.He enters now the shining domeWhere crowded authors sweat for room;So close a man could hardly sayWhich were more fixed, the shelves or they.To please the eye, the highest spaceA set of wooden volumes grace;Pure timber authors that containAs much as some that boast a brain;That Alma Mater never viewed,Without degrees to writers hewed:Yet solid thus just emblems showOf the dull brotherhood below,Smiling their rivals to survey,As great and real blocks as they.Distinguished then in even rows,Here shines the Verse and there the Prose;(For, though Britannia fairer looksUnited, 'tis not so with books):The champions of each different artHad stations all assigned apart,Fearing the rival chiefs might beFor quarrels still, nor dead agree.The schoolmen first in long arrayTheir bulky lumber round display;Seemed to lament their wretched doom,And heave for more convenient room;While doctrine each of weight containsTo crack his shelves as well as brains;Since all with him were thought to dream,That flagged before they filled a ream:His authors wisely taught to prize,Not for their merit, but their size;No surer method ever foundThan buying writers by the pound;For heaven must needs his breast inspire,That scribbling filled each month a quire,And claimed a station on his shelves,Who scorned each sot who fooled in twelves.W. King.(?)Bibliotheca.
The Doctor with himself decreedTo nod—or, much the same, to read.He always seemed a wondrous loverOf painted leaf and Turkey cover,While no regard at all was hadTo sots in homely russet clad,Concluding he must be withinA calf, that wore without his skin.
But, though his thoughts were fixed to read,The treatise was not yet decreed:Uncertain to devote the dayTo politics or else to play;What theme would best his genius suit,Grave morals or a dull dispute,Where both contending champions boastThe victory which neither lost;As chiefs are oft in story readEach to pursue, when neither fled.He enters now the shining domeWhere crowded authors sweat for room;So close a man could hardly sayWhich were more fixed, the shelves or they.
To please the eye, the highest spaceA set of wooden volumes grace;Pure timber authors that containAs much as some that boast a brain;That Alma Mater never viewed,Without degrees to writers hewed:Yet solid thus just emblems showOf the dull brotherhood below,Smiling their rivals to survey,As great and real blocks as they.Distinguished then in even rows,Here shines the Verse and there the Prose;(For, though Britannia fairer looksUnited, 'tis not so with books):The champions of each different artHad stations all assigned apart,Fearing the rival chiefs might beFor quarrels still, nor dead agree.The schoolmen first in long arrayTheir bulky lumber round display;Seemed to lament their wretched doom,And heave for more convenient room;While doctrine each of weight containsTo crack his shelves as well as brains;Since all with him were thought to dream,That flagged before they filled a ream:His authors wisely taught to prize,Not for their merit, but their size;No surer method ever foundThan buying writers by the pound;For heaven must needs his breast inspire,That scribbling filled each month a quire,And claimed a station on his shelves,Who scorned each sot who fooled in twelves.
W. King.(?)Bibliotheca.
'In another century it may be impossible to find a collection of the whole [Greek tragedies] unless some learned and rich man, like Pericles, or some protecting King, like Hiero, should preserve them in his library.' 'Prudently have you considered how to preserve all valuable authors. The cedar doors of a royal library fly open to receive them: aye, there they will be safe ... and untouched.'—W. S. Landor.Pericles and Aspasia.
Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole,How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,And sucked all o'er, like an industrious bug.Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and hereThe frippery of crucified Moliere;There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,Wished he had blotted for himself before.The rest on outside merit but presume,Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,Or their fond parents dressed in red and gold;Or where the pictures for the page atoneAnd Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete:Here all his suffering brotherhood retire,And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:A Gothic Library! of Greece and RomeWell purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.But, high above, more solid learning shone,The classics of an age that heard of none;There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,One clasped in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;There saved by spice, like mummies, many a year,Dry Bodies of Divinity appear;De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends.Of these twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,Redeemed from tapers and defrauded pies,Inspired he seizes; these an altar raise;An hecatomb of pure unsullied laysThat altar crowns; a folio CommonplaceFounds the whole pile, of all his works the base;Quartos, octavos, shape the lessening pyre;A twisted birthday ode completes the spire.A. Pope.The Dunciad.
Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole,How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,And sucked all o'er, like an industrious bug.Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and hereThe frippery of crucified Moliere;There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,Wished he had blotted for himself before.The rest on outside merit but presume,Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,Or their fond parents dressed in red and gold;Or where the pictures for the page atoneAnd Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete:Here all his suffering brotherhood retire,And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:A Gothic Library! of Greece and RomeWell purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.But, high above, more solid learning shone,The classics of an age that heard of none;There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,One clasped in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;There saved by spice, like mummies, many a year,Dry Bodies of Divinity appear;De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends.Of these twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,Redeemed from tapers and defrauded pies,Inspired he seizes; these an altar raise;An hecatomb of pure unsullied laysThat altar crowns; a folio CommonplaceFounds the whole pile, of all his works the base;Quartos, octavos, shape the lessening pyre;A twisted birthday ode completes the spire.
A. Pope.The Dunciad.
Few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I am considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects—and how many millions of books in all languages, and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world. What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by; and though my father would ofttimes sport with my uncle Toby's library—which, by the by, was ridiculous enough—yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much care as my honest uncle Toby had done those upon military architecture.... My father's collection was not great, but, to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it ... he got hold of Prignitz—purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paraeus, Bouchet's Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius.... To do justice to Slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man who had ever entered it before him—and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be en-niched as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to model their books by—for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject—examined every part of it dialectically——then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could strike—or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had empowered him to cast upon it—collating, collecting, and compiling—begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticoes of the learned: so that Slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a model—but as a thorough-stitched digest and regular institute of noses, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known about them.
For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father's collecting, wrote either, plump upon noses—or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as Prignitz, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-houses in Silesia, which he had rummaged——has informed us, that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any given tract of country, except Crim Tartary, where they are all crushed down by the thumb, so that no judgement can be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines.—L. Sterne.Tristram Shandy.
Dominie Sampson was occupied, body and soul, in the arrangement of the late bishop's library, which had been sent from Liverpool by sea, and conveyed by thirty or forty carts from the seaport at which it was landed. Sampson's joy at beholding the ponderous contents of these chests arranged upon the floor of the large apartment, from whence he was to transfer them to the shelves, baffles all description. He grinned like an ogre, swung his arms like the sails of a windmill, shouted 'Prodigious' till the roof rung to his raptures. 'He had never,' he said, 'seen so many books together, except in the College Library;' and now his dignity and delight in being superintendent of the collection, raised him, in his own opinion, almost to the rank of the academical librarian, whom he had always regarded as the greatest and happiest man on earth. Neither were his transports diminished upon a hasty examination of the contents of these volumes. Some, indeed, of belles lettres, poems, plays, or memoirs, he tossed indignantly aside, with the implied censure of 'psha', or 'frivolous'; but the greater and bulkier part of the collection bore a very different character. The deceased prelate, a divine of the old and deeply-learned cast, had loaded his shelves with volumes which displayed the antiqueand venerable attributes so happily described by a modern poet:
That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid;Those ample clasps, of solid metal made;The close-pressed leaves unoped for many an age;The dull red edging of the well-filled page;On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,Where yet the title stands in tarnished gold.
That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid;Those ample clasps, of solid metal made;The close-pressed leaves unoped for many an age;The dull red edging of the well-filled page;On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,Where yet the title stands in tarnished gold.
Books of theology and controversial divinity, commentaries, and polyglots, sets of the Fathers, and sermons, which might each furnish forth ten brief discourses of modern date, books of science, ancient and modern, classical authors in their best and rarest forms; such formed the late bishop's venerable library, and over such the eye of Dominie Sampson gloated with rapture. He entered them in the catalogue in his best running hand, forming each letter with the accuracy of a lover writing a valentine, and placed each individually on the destined shelf with all the reverence which I have seen a lady pay to a jar of old china. With all this zeal his labours advanced slowly. He often opened a volume when half-way up the library-steps, fell upon some interesting passage, and, without shifting his inconvenient posture, continued immersed in the fascinating perusal until the servant pulled him by the skirts to assure him that dinner waited. He then repaired to the parlour, bolted his food down his capacious throat in squares of three inches, answered aye or no at random to whatever question was asked at him, and again hurried back to the library as soon as his napkin was removed, and sometimes with it hanging round his neck like a pinafore—
How happily the daysOf Thalaba went by!Sir W. Scott.Guy Mannering.
How happily the daysOf Thalaba went by!
Sir W. Scott.Guy Mannering.
Me, poor man,—my libraryWas dukedom large enough.W. Shakespeare.The Tempest.
Me, poor man,—my libraryWas dukedom large enough.
W. Shakespeare.The Tempest.
On shelf of deal beside the cuckoo-clock,Of cottage-reading rests the chosen stock;Learning we lack, not books, but have a kindFor all our wants, a meat for every mind:The tale for wonder and the joke for whim,The half-sung sermon and the half-groaned hymn.No need of classing; each within its place,The feeling finger in the dark can trace;'First from the corner, farthest from the wall,'Such all the rules, and they suffice for all.There pious works for Sunday's use are found;Companions for the Bible newly bound;That Bible, bought by sixpence weekly saved,Has choicest prints by famous hands engraved;Has choicest notes by many a famous head,Such as to doubt have rustic readers led;Have made them stop to reasonwhy? andhow?And, where they once agreed, to cavil now.Oh! rather give me commentators plain,Who with no deep researches vex the brain;Who from the dark and doubtful love to run,And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun;Who simple truth with nine-fold reason back,And guard the point no enemies attack.Bunyan's famed Pilgrim rests the shelf upon;A genius rare but rude was honest John:Not one who, early by the Muse beguiled,Drank from her well the waters undefiled;Not one who slowly gained the hill sublime,Then often sipped and little at a time;But one who dabbled in the sacred springs,And drank them muddy, mixed with baser things.Here to interpret dreams we read the rules,Science our own! and never taught in schools;In moles and specks we Fortune's gifts discern,And Fate's fixed will from Nature's wanderings learn.Of Hermit Quarle we read, in island rare,Far from mankind and seeming far from care;Safe from all want, and sound in every limb;Yes! there was he, and there was care with him.Unbound and heaped, these valued works beside,Lay humbler works, the pedlar's pack supplied;Yet these, long since, have all acquired a name;The Wandering Jew has found his way to fame;And fame, denied to many a laboured song,Crowns Thumb the great and Hickerthrift the strong.There too is he, by wizard-power upheld,Jack, by whose arm the giant-brood were quelled:His shoes of swiftness on his feet he placed;His coat of darkness on his loins he braced;His sword of sharpness in his hand he took,And off the heads of doughty giants stroke:Their glaring eyes beheld no mortal near;No sound of feet alarmed the drowsy ear;No English blood their pagan sense could smell,But heads dropped headlong, wondering why they fell.These are the peasant's joy, when, placed at ease,Half his delighted offspring mount his knees.G. Crabbe.The Parish Register.
On shelf of deal beside the cuckoo-clock,Of cottage-reading rests the chosen stock;Learning we lack, not books, but have a kindFor all our wants, a meat for every mind:The tale for wonder and the joke for whim,The half-sung sermon and the half-groaned hymn.No need of classing; each within its place,The feeling finger in the dark can trace;'First from the corner, farthest from the wall,'Such all the rules, and they suffice for all.There pious works for Sunday's use are found;Companions for the Bible newly bound;That Bible, bought by sixpence weekly saved,Has choicest prints by famous hands engraved;Has choicest notes by many a famous head,Such as to doubt have rustic readers led;Have made them stop to reasonwhy? andhow?And, where they once agreed, to cavil now.Oh! rather give me commentators plain,Who with no deep researches vex the brain;Who from the dark and doubtful love to run,And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun;Who simple truth with nine-fold reason back,And guard the point no enemies attack.Bunyan's famed Pilgrim rests the shelf upon;A genius rare but rude was honest John:Not one who, early by the Muse beguiled,Drank from her well the waters undefiled;Not one who slowly gained the hill sublime,Then often sipped and little at a time;But one who dabbled in the sacred springs,And drank them muddy, mixed with baser things.Here to interpret dreams we read the rules,Science our own! and never taught in schools;In moles and specks we Fortune's gifts discern,And Fate's fixed will from Nature's wanderings learn.Of Hermit Quarle we read, in island rare,Far from mankind and seeming far from care;Safe from all want, and sound in every limb;Yes! there was he, and there was care with him.Unbound and heaped, these valued works beside,Lay humbler works, the pedlar's pack supplied;Yet these, long since, have all acquired a name;The Wandering Jew has found his way to fame;And fame, denied to many a laboured song,Crowns Thumb the great and Hickerthrift the strong.There too is he, by wizard-power upheld,Jack, by whose arm the giant-brood were quelled:His shoes of swiftness on his feet he placed;His coat of darkness on his loins he braced;His sword of sharpness in his hand he took,And off the heads of doughty giants stroke:Their glaring eyes beheld no mortal near;No sound of feet alarmed the drowsy ear;No English blood their pagan sense could smell,But heads dropped headlong, wondering why they fell.These are the peasant's joy, when, placed at ease,Half his delighted offspring mount his knees.
G. Crabbe.The Parish Register.
Books, books, books!I had found the secret of a garret-roomPiled high with cases in my father's name;Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and outAmong the giant fossils of my past,Like some small nimble mouse between the ribsOf a mastodon, I nibbled here and thereAt this or that box, pulling through the gap,In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,The first book first. And how I felt it beatUnder my pillow, in the morning's dark,An hour before the sun would let me read!My books!E. B. Browning.Aurora Leigh.
Books, books, books!I had found the secret of a garret-roomPiled high with cases in my father's name;Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and outAmong the giant fossils of my past,Like some small nimble mouse between the ribsOf a mastodon, I nibbled here and thereAt this or that box, pulling through the gap,In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,The first book first. And how I felt it beatUnder my pillow, in the morning's dark,An hour before the sun would let me read!My books!
E. B. Browning.Aurora Leigh.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only on the history of pin-heads.—O. W. Holmes.The Poet at the Breakfast-Table.
At home I betake me somewhat the oftener to my library, whence all at once I command and survey all my household. It is seated in the chief entry of my house, thence I behold under me my garden, my base court, my yard, and look even into most rooms of my house. There without order, without method, and by piece-meals I turn over and ransack, now one book and now another. Sometimes I muse and rave; and walking up and down I indite and enregister these my humours, these my conceits. It is placed on the third story of a tower. The lowermost is my chapel; the second a chamber with other lodgings, where I often lie, because I would be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. It was in times past the most unprofitable place of all my house. There I pass the greatest part of my life's days, and wear out most hours of the day. I am never there a nights. Next unto it is a handsome neat cabinet, able and large enough to receive fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowen. And if I feared not care more than cost (care which drives and diverts me from all business), I might easily join a convenient gallery of a hundred paces long and twelve broad on each side of it, and upon one floor; having already, for some other purpose, found all the walls raised unto a convenient height. Each retired place requireth a walk. My thoughts are prone to sleep if I sit long. My mind goes not alone, as if ledges did move it. Those that study without books are all in the same case. The form of it is round, and hath no flat side, but what serveth for my table and chair: in which bending or circling manner, at one look it offereth me the full sight of all my books, set round about upon shelves or desks, five ranks one upon another. It hath three bay-windows, of a far-extending, rich and unresisted prospect, and is in diameter sixteen paces void. In winter I am less continually there: for my house (as the name of it importeth) is perched upon an over-peering hillock; and hath no part more subject to all weathers than this: which pleaseth me the more, both because the access unto it is somewhat troublesome and remote, and for the benefit of the exercise which is to be respected; and that I may the better secludemyself from company, and keep encroachers from me: There is my seat, that is my throne. I endeavour to make my rule therein absolute, and to sequester that only corner from the community of wife, of children, and of acquaintance. Elsewhere I have but a verbal authority, of confused essence. Miserable in my mind is he who in his own home hath nowhere to be to himself; where he may particularly court, and at his pleasure hide or withdraw self.—Montaigne.
I was in my library, making room upon the shelves for some books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous station others which were of less value and in worse dress, when Sir Thomas entered. You are employed, said he, to your heart's content. Why, Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant society, what have you to covet or desire?
Montesinos
Nothing, ... except more books.
Sir Thomas More
Crescit, indulgens sibi, dirus hydrops.
Montesinos
Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least is no diseased desire! If I covet more, it is for the want I feel and the use which I should make of them.
'Libraries,' says my good old friend George Dyer, a man as learned as he is benevolent, ... 'libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use.' These books of mine, as you well know, are not drawn up here for display, however much the pride of the eye may be gratified in beholding them; they are on actual service. Whenever they may be dispersed, there is not one among them that will ever be more comfortably lodged, or more highly prized by its possessor; and generations may pass away before someof them will again find a reader.... It is well that we do not moralize too much upon such subjects, ...
For foresight is a melancholy gift,Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift.
For foresight is a melancholy gift,Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift.
But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or in anticipation, is always to me a melancholy thing.
Sir Thomas More
How many such dispersions must have taken place to have made it possible that these books should thus be brought together here among the Cumberland mountains!
Montesinos
Many, indeed; and in many instances most disastrous ones. Not a few of these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of the family or convent libraries during the late Revolution. Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchines, at Ghent. This book of St. Bridget's Revelations, in which not only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume was coloured, came from the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges. That copy of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits' College at Louvain; thatImago Primi Saeculi Societatis, from their college at Ruremond. Here are books from Colbert's library; here others from the Lamoignon one.... A book is the more valuable to me when I know to whom it has belonged, and through what 'scenes and changes' it has past.
Sir Thomas More
You would have its history recorded in the fly-leaf, as carefully as the pedigree of a race-horse is preserved.
Montesinos
I confess that I have much of that feeling in which the superstition concerning relics has originated; and I am sorry when I see the name of a former owner obliterated in a book, or the plate of his arms defaced. Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something saved for awhile from oblivion; and I should be almost as unwilling to destroy them, as to efface theHic jacetof a tombstone. There maybe sometimes a pleasure in recognizing them, sometimes a salutary sadness....
Sir Thomas More
How peaceably they stand together,—Papists and Protestants side by side!
Montesinos
Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and Modern, Jew and Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French and English, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their old battles, silently now, upon the same shelf: Fernand Lopez and Pedro de Ayala; John de Laet and Barlaeus, with the historians of Joam Fernandes Vieira; Foxe's Martyrs and the Three Conversions of Father Parsons; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner; Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit andPhilosophe(equally misnamed); Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads and Cavaliers!
Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and hereIs nature's secretary, the philosopher:And wily statesman, which teach how to tieThe sinews of a city's mystic body;Here gathering chroniclers: and by them standGiddy fantastic poets of each land.
Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and hereIs nature's secretary, the philosopher:And wily statesman, which teach how to tieThe sinews of a city's mystic body;Here gathering chroniclers: and by them standGiddy fantastic poets of each land.
Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so many generations, laid up in my garners: and when I go to the window, there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable sky.... Never can any man's life have been passed more in accord with his own inclinations, nor more answerably to his own desires. Excepting that peace which, through God's infinite mercy, is derived from a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, but for every blessing which I enjoy; ... health of mind and activity of mind, contentment, cheerfulness, continual employments, and therewith continual pleasure.Suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem; and this, as Bacon has said, and Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys in retirement. To the studies whichI have faithfully pursued, I am indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed an honour to have lived in friendship; and as for the enemies which they have procured to me in sufficient numbers, ... happily I am not of the thin-skinned race, ... they might as well fire small shot at a rhinoceros, as direct their attacks upon me.In omnibus requiem quaesivi, said Thomas à Kempis,sed non inveni nisi in angulis et libellis. I too have found repose where he did, in books and retirement, but it was there alone I sought it: to these my nature, under the direction of a merciful Providence, led me betimes, and the world can offer nothing which should tempt me from them.—R. Southey.Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. Colloquy xiv: 'The Library.'
His library, though not abounding in Greek or Latin (which are the only things to help some persons to an idea of literature), is anything but superficial. The depths of philosophy and poetry are there, the innermost passages of the human heart. It has some Latin too. It has also a handsome contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls; now a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor; a Spinoza; an old English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are 'neat as imported'. The very perusal of the backs is a 'discipline of humanity'. There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewell: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the 'high fantastical' Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids.—J. H. Leigh Hunt.My Books.
O! I methinks could dwell contentA spell-bound captive here;And find, in such imprisonment,Each fleeting moment dear;—Dear, not to outward sense alone,But thought's most elevated tone.The song of birds, the hum of bees,Their sweetest music make;The March winds, through the lofty trees,Their wilder strains awake;Or from the broad magnolia leavesA gentler gale its spirit heaves.Nor less the eye enraptured rovesO'er turf of freshest green,O'er bursting flowers, and budding groves,And sky of changeful mien,Where sunny glimpses, bright and blue,The fleecy clouds are peeping through.Thus soothed, in every passing mood,How sweet each gifted page,Rich with the mind's ambrosial food,The Muse's brighter age!How sweet, communion here to holdWith them, the mighty bards of old.With them—whose master spirits yetIn deathless numbers dwell,Whose works defy us to forgetTheir still-surviving spell;—That spell, which lingers in a name,Whose every echo whispers Fame!Could aught enhance such hours of bliss,It were in converse knownWith him who boasts a scene like this,An Eden of his own;Whose taste and talent gave it birth,And well can estimate its worth.B. Barton.
O! I methinks could dwell contentA spell-bound captive here;And find, in such imprisonment,Each fleeting moment dear;—Dear, not to outward sense alone,But thought's most elevated tone.
The song of birds, the hum of bees,Their sweetest music make;The March winds, through the lofty trees,Their wilder strains awake;Or from the broad magnolia leavesA gentler gale its spirit heaves.
Nor less the eye enraptured rovesO'er turf of freshest green,O'er bursting flowers, and budding groves,And sky of changeful mien,Where sunny glimpses, bright and blue,The fleecy clouds are peeping through.
Thus soothed, in every passing mood,How sweet each gifted page,Rich with the mind's ambrosial food,The Muse's brighter age!How sweet, communion here to holdWith them, the mighty bards of old.
With them—whose master spirits yetIn deathless numbers dwell,Whose works defy us to forgetTheir still-surviving spell;—That spell, which lingers in a name,Whose every echo whispers Fame!
Could aught enhance such hours of bliss,It were in converse knownWith him who boasts a scene like this,An Eden of his own;Whose taste and talent gave it birth,And well can estimate its worth.
B. Barton.
The works or acts of merit towards learning are conversant about three objects; the places of learning, the books of learning, and the persons of the learned.... The works touching books are two: first, libraries which are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed; secondly, new editions of authors, with more correct impressions, more faithful translations, more profitable glosses, more diligent annotations, and the like.—F. Bacon, Lord Verulam.Of the Advancement of Learning.
Never had we been offended for the loss of our libraries, being so many in number, and in so desolate places for the most part, if the chief monuments and most notable works of our excellent writers had been reserved. If there had been in every shire of England but one Solempne Library, to the preservation of those noble works, and preferment of good learning in our posterity, it had been yet somewhat. But to destroy all without consideration is, and will be, unto England for ever, a most horrible infamy among the grave seniors of other nations. A great number of them which purchased those superstitious mansions, reserved of those library-books, some to serve the jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots. Some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers; some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small number, but at times whole ships full, to the wondering of the foreign nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear of this detestable fact. But, cursed is that belly which seeketh to be fed with such ungodly gains, and shameth his natural country. I know a merchant-man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings price;a shame it is to be spoken! This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper, by the space of more than ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come!—J. Bale.Preface to the Laboryouse Journey of Leland.
I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them; the same series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared for that national series in the most perfect way possible; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of binders' work; and that these great libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the day and evening; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness.—J. Ruskin.Sesame and Lilies.
'Let there be light!' God spake of old,And over chaos dark and cold,And through the dead and formless frameOf nature, life and order came.Faint was the light at first that shoneOn giant fern and mastodon,On half-formed plant and beast of prey,And man as rude and wild as they.Age after age, like waves, o'erranThe earth, uplifting brute and man;And mind, at length, in symbols darkIts meanings traced on stone and bark.On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll,On plastic clay and leathern scroll,Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,And lo! the Press was found at last!Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of menWhose bones were dust revived again;The cloister's silence found a tongue,Old prophets spake, old poets sung.And here, to-day, the dead look down,The kings of mind again we crown;We hear the voices lost so long,The sage's word, the sibyl's song.Here Greek and Roman find themselvesAlive along these crowded shelves;And Shakespeare treads again his stage,And Chaucer paints anew his age.As if some Pantheon's marbles brokeTheir stony trance, and lived and spoke,Life thrills along the alcoved hall,The lords of thought await our call!J. G. Whittier.
'Let there be light!' God spake of old,And over chaos dark and cold,And through the dead and formless frameOf nature, life and order came.
Faint was the light at first that shoneOn giant fern and mastodon,On half-formed plant and beast of prey,And man as rude and wild as they.
Age after age, like waves, o'erranThe earth, uplifting brute and man;And mind, at length, in symbols darkIts meanings traced on stone and bark.
On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll,On plastic clay and leathern scroll,Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,And lo! the Press was found at last!
Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of menWhose bones were dust revived again;The cloister's silence found a tongue,Old prophets spake, old poets sung.
And here, to-day, the dead look down,The kings of mind again we crown;We hear the voices lost so long,The sage's word, the sibyl's song.
Here Greek and Roman find themselvesAlive along these crowded shelves;And Shakespeare treads again his stage,And Chaucer paints anew his age.
As if some Pantheon's marbles brokeTheir stony trance, and lived and spoke,Life thrills along the alcoved hall,The lords of thought await our call!
J. G. Whittier.
One of the great offices of a Reference Library is to keep at the service of everybody what everybody cannot keep at home for his own service. It is not convenient to every man to have a very large telescope; I may wish to study the skeleton of a whale but my house is not large enough to hold one; I may be curious in microscopes but I may have no money to buy one of my own. But provide an institution like this and here is the telescope, here is the microscope, and here the skeleton of the whale. Here are the great picture, the mighty book, the ponderous atlas, the great histories of the world. They are here always ready for the use of every man without his being put to the cost of purchase or the discomfort of giving them house-room. Here are books that we only want to consult occasionally and which are very costly. These are the booksproper for a Library like this—mighty cyclopaedias, prodigious charts, books that only Governments can publish. It is almost the only place where I would avoid cheapness as a plague and run away from mean printing and petty pages with disgust.—George Dawson.Address at the opening of the Birmingham Free Reference Library, 1866.
The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the woodlands it vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of light.... It is renewed and fresh every moment, and never twice do you see the same ray. Stayed and checked by the dome and book-built walls, the beams lose their elasticity, and the ripple ceases in the motionless pool. The eyes, responding, forget to turn quickly, and only partially see. Deeper thought and inspiration quit the heart, for they can only exist where the light vibrates and communicates its tone to the soul. If any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will be disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and in the woodland, in the sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove haunts. Walls and roof shut it off as they shut off the undulation of light. The very lightning cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the coming of the cloud, and the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is shorn to a pale reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling of a heavier truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with it is cut off all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its passion of storm.
Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind weariesof books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted, there is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the books in the world—really books—can be bought for £10. Man's whole thought is purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch, of a good dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase.—R. Jefferies.The Life of the Fields: The Pigeons at the British Museum.
Now behold us, ... settled in all the state and grandeur of our own house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury: the library of the Museum close at hand. My father spends his mornings in thoselata silentia, as Virgil calls the world beyond the grave. And a world beyond the grave we may well call that land of the ghosts, a book collection.
'Pisistratus,' said my father, one evening as he arranged his notes before him, and rubbed his spectacles. 'Pisistratus, a great library is anawfulplace! There, are interred all the remains of men since the Flood.'
'It is a burial-place!' quoth my Uncle Roland, who had that day found us out.
'It is an Heraclea!' said my father.
'Please, not such hard words,' said the Captain, shaking his head.
'Heraclea was the city of necromancers, in which they raised the dead. Do I want to speak to Cicero?—I invoke him. Do I want to chat in the Athenian market-place, and hear news two thousand years old?—I write down my charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician calls me up Aristophanes.... But it is notthatwhich is awful. It is the presuming to vie with these "spirits elect": to say to them, "Make way—I too claim place with the chosen. I too would confer with the living, centuries after the death that consumes my dust."'—E. G. E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton.The Caxtons.
I should explain that I cannot write unless I have a sloping desk, and the reading-room of the British Museum, where alone I can compose freely, is unprovided with sloping desks. Like every other organism, if I cannot get exactly what I want, I make shift with the next thing to it; true, there are no desks in the reading-room, but, as I once heard a visitor from the country say, 'it contains a large number of very interesting works.' I know it was not right, and hope the Museum authorities will not be severe upon me if any one of them reads this confession; but I wanted a desk, and set myself to consider which of the many very interesting works which a grateful nation places at the disposal of its would-be authors was best suited for my purpose.
For mere reading I suppose one book is pretty much as good as another: but the choice of a desk-book is a more serious matter. It must be neither too thick nor too thin; it must be large enough to make a substantial support; it must be strongly bound so as not to yield or give; it must not be too troublesome to carry backwards and forwards; and it must live on shelf C, D, or E, so that there need be no stooping or reaching too high.... For weeks I made experiments upon sundry poetical and philosophical works, whose names I have forgotten, but could not succeed in finding my ideal desk, until at length, more by luck than cunning, I happened to light upon Frost's 'Lives of Eminent Christians', which I had no sooner tried than I discovered it to be the very perfection andne plus ultraof everything that a book should be.... On finding myself asked for a contribution to theUniversal Review, I went, as I have explained, to the Museum, and presently repaired to bookcase No. 2008 to get my favourite volume. Alas! it was in the room no longer. It was not in use, for its place was filled up already; besides, no one ever used it but myself.... Till I have found a substitute I can write no more, and I do not know how to find even a tolerable one. I should try a volume of Migne'sComplete Course of Patrology, but I do not like books in more than one volume, for the volumes vary in thickness, and one never can remember which onetook; the four volumes, however, of Bede in Giles'sAnglican Fathersare not open to this objection, and I have reserved them for favourable consideration. Mather'sMagnaliamight do, but the binding does not please me; Cureton'sCorpus Ignatianummight also do if it were not too thin. I do not like taking Norton'sGenuineness of the Gospels, as it is just possible some one may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are genuine or not, and be unable to find out because I have got Mr. Norton's book. Baxter'sChurch History of England, Lingard'sAnglo-Saxon Church, and Cardwell'sDocumentary Annals, though none of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but on the whole I think Arvine'sCyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdoteis perhaps the one book in the room which comes within measurable distance of Frost.... Some successor I must find, or I must give up writing altogether, and this I should be sorry to do.—S. Butler.Essays on Life, Art, and Science.
What a world of wit is here packed up together! I know not, whether this sight doth more dismay, or comfort me: it dismays me, to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me, to think that this variety yields so good helps, to know what I should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon: 'There is no end of making many books.' This sight verifies it. There is no end: it were pity there should. God hath given to man a busy soul; the agitation whereof cannot but, through time and experience, work out many hidden truths: to suppress these, would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose minds like unto so many candles should be kindled by each other. The thoughts of our deliberation are most accurate: these we vent into our papers. What a happiness is it, that, without all offence of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts! that I can, at pleasure, summon whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgements, in all points ofquestion, which I propose! Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters, but I must learn somewhat. It is a wantonness, to complain of choice. No law binds us to read all: but the more we can take in and digest, the better-liking must the mind needs be. Blessed be God, that set up so many clear lamps in his Church: now, none, but the wilfully blind, can plead darkness. And blessed be the memory of those his faithful servants, that have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious papers; and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monuments, to give light unto others.—Joseph Hall.Occasional Meditations.
There are more ways to derive instruction from books than the direct and chief one of applying the attention to what they contain. Things connected with them, by natural or casual association, will sometimes suggest themselves to a reflective and imaginative reader, and divert him into secondary trains of ideas. In these, the mind may, indeed, float along in perfect indolence and acquire no good; but a serious disposition might regulate them to a profitable result....
Even in the most cursory notice of them, when the attention is engaged by no one in particular, ideas may be started of a tendency not wholly foreign to instruction. A reflective person, in his library, in some hour of intermittent application, when the mind is surrendered to vagrant musing, may glance along the ranges of volumes with a slight recognition of the authors, in long miscellaneous array of ancients and moderns. And that musing may become shaped into ideas like these:—What a number of our busy race have deemed themselves capable of informing and directing the rest of mankind! What a vast amount is collected here of the results of the most strenuous and protracted exertions of so many minds! What were in each of these claimants that the world should think as they did, the most prevailing motives? How many of them sincerely loved truth, honestly sought it, and faithfully, to the best of their knowledge, declared it? What might be the circumstances andinfluences which determined in the case of that one author, and the next, and the next again, their own modes of opinion?
And how much have they actually done for truth and righteousness in the world? Do not the contents of these accumulated volumes constitute a chaos of all discordant and contradictory principles, theories, representations of facts, and figurings of imaginations? Could I not instantly place beside each other the works of two noted authors, who maintain for truth directly opposite doctrines, or systems of doctrine; and then add a third book which explodes them both? I can take some one book in which the prime spirits of the world, through all time, are brought together, announcing the speculations which they, respectively, proclaimed to be the essence of all wisdom, protesting, with solemn censure or sneering contempt, against the dogmas and theories of one another, and conflicting in a huge Babel of all imaginable opinions and vagaries....
Thus far the instructive reflections which even the mere exterior of an accumulation of books may suggest are supposed to occur in the way of thinking of theauthors. But the same books may also excite some interesting ideas through their less obvious but not altogether fanciful association with the persons who may have been theirreadersorpossessors. The mind of a thoughtful looker over a range of volumes of many dates, and a considerable portion of them old, will sometimes be led into a train of conjectural questions:—Who were they that, in various times and places, have had these in their possession? Perhaps many hands have turned over the leaves, many eyes have passed along the lines. With what measure of intelligence, and of approval or dissent, did those persons respectively follow the train of thoughts? How many of them were honestly intent on becoming wise by what they read? How many sincere prayers were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom during the perusal? How many have been determined, in their judgement or their actions, by these books? What emotions, temptations, or painful occurrences, may have interrupted the reading of this book, or of that?—J. Foster.Introductory Essay to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.
A great library! What a mass of human misery is here commemorated!—how many buried hopes surround us!
The author of that work was the greatest natural philosopher that ever enlightened mankind. His biographers are now disputing whether at one period of his life he was not of unsound mind—but all agree that he was afterwards able to understand his own writings.
The author of those numerous volumes was logician, metaphysician, natural historian, philosopher; his sanity was never doubted, and with his last breath he regretted his birth, mourned over his life, expressed his fear of death, and called upon the Cause of causes to pity him. His slightest thoughts continued to domineer over the world for ages, until they were in some measure silenced by those works which contain the unfettered meditations of a very great man, who, being more careless than corrupt in the administration of his high office, has gone down to posterity, as