Were I to name, out of the times gone by,The poets dearest to me, I should say,Pulci for spirits, and a fine, free way;Chaucer for manners, and close, silent eye;Milton for classic taste, and harp strung high;Spenser for luxury, and sweet, sylvan play;Horace for chatting with, from day to day;Shakespeare for all, but most, society.But which take with me, could I take but one?Shakespeare,—as long as I was unoppressedWith the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser;But did I wish, out of the common sunTo lay a wounded heart in leafy rest,And dream of things far off and healing,—Spenser.J. H. Leigh Hunt.
Were I to name, out of the times gone by,The poets dearest to me, I should say,Pulci for spirits, and a fine, free way;Chaucer for manners, and close, silent eye;Milton for classic taste, and harp strung high;Spenser for luxury, and sweet, sylvan play;Horace for chatting with, from day to day;Shakespeare for all, but most, society.
But which take with me, could I take but one?Shakespeare,—as long as I was unoppressedWith the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser;But did I wish, out of the common sunTo lay a wounded heart in leafy rest,And dream of things far off and healing,—Spenser.
J. H. Leigh Hunt.
You may get the whole of Sir Thomas Browne's works more easily than theHydrotaphiain a single form.... If I were confined to a score of English books, this I think would be one of them; nay, probably, it would be one if the selection were cut down to twelve. My library, if reduced to those bounds, would consist of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton; Lord Clarendon; Jackson, Jeremy Taylor, and South; Isaac Walton, Sidney'sArcadia, Fuller'sChurch History, and Sir Thomas Browne; and what a wealthy and well-stored mind would that man have, what an inexhaustible reservoir, what a Bank of England to draw upon for profitable thoughts and delightful associations, who should have fed upon them.—R. Southey(Letter to G. C. Bedford).
Whoever converses much among the old books will be something hard to please among the new; yet these must have their part, too, in the leisure of an idle man, and have, many of them, their beauties as well as their defaults. Those of story, or relations of matter of fact, have a value from their substance as much as from their form, and the variety of events is seldom without entertainment or instruction, how indifferently soever the tale is told. Other sorts of writings have little of esteem but what they receive from the wit, learning, or genius of the authors, and are seldom met with of any excellency, because they do but trace over the paths that have been beaten by the ancients, or comment, critic, and flourish upon them, and are at best but copies after those originals, unless upon subjects never touched by them, such as are all that relate to the different constitutions of religions, laws, or governments in several countries, with all matters of controversy that arise upon them.—Sir W. Temple.Ancient and Modern Learning.
Immediately the two main bodies withdrew, under their several ensigns, to the farther parts of the library, and there entered into cabals and consults upon the present emergency. The Moderns were in very warm debates upon the choice of their leaders; and nothing less than the fear impending from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon this occasion. The difference was greatest among the horse, where every private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Wither. The light-horse were commanded by Cowley and Despreaux. There came the bowmen under their valiant leaders, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes; whose strength was such that they could shoot their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to fall down again, but turn, like that of Evander, into meteors; or, like the cannon-ball, into stars. Paracelsus brought a squadron of stinkpot-flingers from the snowy mountains of Rhaetia. There came a vast body of dragoons, of different nations, under the leading of Harvey, their great aga: part armed with scythes, the weapons ofdeath; part with lances and long knives, all steeped in poison; part shot bullets of a most malignant nature, and used white powder, which infallibly killed without report. There came several bodies of heavy-armed foot, all mercenaries, under the ensigns of Guiccardini, Davila, Polydore, Virgil, Buchanan, Mariana, Camden, and others. The engineers were commanded by Regiomontanus and Wilkins. The rest was a confused multitude, led by Scotus, Aquinas, and Bellarmine; of mighty bulk and stature, but without either arms, courage, or discipline. In the last place came infinite swarms of calones, a disorderly rout led by L'Estrange; rogues and ragamuffins, that follow the camp for nothing but the plunder, all without coats to cover them.
The Army of the Ancients was much fewer in number; Homer led the horse, and Pindar the light-horse; Euclid was chief engineer; Plato and Aristotle commanded the bowmen; Herodotus and Livy the foot; Hippocrates, the dragoons; the allies, led by Vossius and Temple, brought up the rear.
All things violently tending to a decisive battle, Fame, who much frequented, and had a large apartment assigned her in the regal library, fled up straight to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a faithful account of all that passed between the two parties below; for among the Gods she always tells truth. Jove, in great concern, convokes a council in the Milky Way. The senate assembled, he declares the occasion of convening them; a bloody battle just impendent between two mighty armies of ancient and modern creatures, called books, wherein the celestial interest was but too deeply concerned. Momus, the patron of the Moderns, made an excellent speech in their favour, which was answered by Pallas, the protectress of the Ancients. The assembly was divided in their affections; when Jupiter commanded the Book of Fate to be laid before him. Immediately were brought by Mercury three large volumes in folio, containing memoirs of all things past, present, and to come. The clasps were of silver double gilt, the covers of celestial turkey leather, and the paper such as here on earth might almost pass for vellum. Jupiter, having silently read the decree, would communicate the import to none, but presently shut up the book....
Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an ancient prophecy which bore no very good face to his children the Moderns, bent his flight to the region of a malignant deity called Criticism. She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla; there Momus found her extended in her den, upon the spoils of numberless volumes, half devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left, Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hoodwinked, and headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dullness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners.... 'Goddess,' said Momus, 'can you sit idly here while our devout worshippers, the Moderns, are this minute entering into a cruel battle, and perhaps now lying under the swords of their enemies? Who then hereafter will ever sacrifice or build altars to our divinities? Haste, therefore, to the British Isle, and, if possible, prevent their destruction; while I make factions among the gods, and gain them over to our party.' ...
The goddess and her train, having mounted the chariot, which was drawn by tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her influence in due places, till at length she arrived at her beloved island of Britain; but in hovering over its metropolis, what blessings did she not let fall upon her seminaries of Gresham and Covent Garden! And now she reached the fatal plain of St. James's library, at what time the two armies were upon the point to engage; where, entering with all her caravan unseen, and landing upon a case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by a colony of virtuosos, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of both armies.—J. Swift.The Battle of the Books.
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say, in commendation of Age, that Age appeared to be best in four things; Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.—F. Bacon, Lord Verulam.Apophthegmes.
Classicus is a man of learning, and well versed in all the best authors of antiquity. He has read them so much that he has entered into their spirit, and can very ingeniously imitate the manner of any of them. All their thoughts are his thoughts, and he can express himself in their language. He is so great a friend to this improvement of the mind that if he lights on a young scholar he never fails to advise him concerning his studies.
Classicus tells his young man he must not think that he has done enough when he has only learnt languages; but that he must be daily conversant with the best authors, read them again and again, catch their spirit by living with them, and that there is no other way of becoming like them, or of making himself a man of taste and judgement.
How wise might Classicus have been and how much good might he have done in the world, if he had but thought as justly of devotion as he does of learning!... The two testaments would not have had so much as a place amongst his books, but that they are both to be had in Greek.
Classicus thinks that he sufficiently shows his regard for the holy scriptures when he tells you that he has no other book of piety besides them.—W. Law.A serious Call to a devout and holy Life.
That critic must indeed be boldWho pits new authors against old.Only the ancient coin is prized,The dead alone are canonized:What was even Shakespeare until then?A poet scarce compared with Ben:And Milton in the streets no tallerThan sparkling easy-ambling Waller.Waller now walks with rhyming crowds,While Milton sits above the clouds,Above the stars, his fixed abode,And points to men their way to God.W. S. Landor.
That critic must indeed be boldWho pits new authors against old.Only the ancient coin is prized,The dead alone are canonized:What was even Shakespeare until then?A poet scarce compared with Ben:And Milton in the streets no tallerThan sparkling easy-ambling Waller.Waller now walks with rhyming crowds,While Milton sits above the clouds,Above the stars, his fixed abode,And points to men their way to God.
W. S. Landor.
Will nothing but from Greece or RomePlease me? is nothing good at home?Yes; better; but I look in vainFor a Molière or La Fontaine.Swift in his humour was as strong,But there was gall upon his tongue.Bitters and acids may excite,Yet satisfy not appetite.W. S. Landor.
Will nothing but from Greece or RomePlease me? is nothing good at home?Yes; better; but I look in vainFor a Molière or La Fontaine.Swift in his humour was as strong,But there was gall upon his tongue.Bitters and acids may excite,Yet satisfy not appetite.
W. S. Landor.
Sir, ... we must read what the world reads at the moment. It has been maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferior value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books than from having read the best books of antiquity. But it must be considered, that we have now more knowledge generally diffused; all our ladies read now, which is a great extension. Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients. Greece appears to me to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance.—S. Johnson.(Boswell'sLife.)
From Lien Chi Altangi to Fum Hoam, First President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China
From Lien Chi Altangi to Fum Hoam, First President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China
There are numbers in this city who live by writing new books; and yet there are thousands of volumes in every large library unread and forgotten. This, upon my arrival, was one of those contradictions which I was unable to account for. Is it possible, said I, that there should be any demand for new books before those already published are read? Can there be so many employed in producing a commodity with which the market is overstocked; and with goods also better than any of modern manufacture!
What at first view appeared an inconsistency is a proof at once of this people's wisdom and refinement. Even allowing the works of their ancestors better written than theirs, yet those of the moderns acquire a real value, by being marked with the impression of the times. Antiquity has been in the possession of others; the present is our own: let us first therefore learn to know what belongs to ourselves, and then, if we have leisure, cast our reflections back to the reign of Shonsu, who governed twenty thousand years before the creation of the moon.
The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use; the former are often prized above their intrinsic value, and kept with care, the latter seldom pass for more than they are worth, and are often subject to the merciless hands of sweating critics and clipping compilers: the works of antiquity were ever praised, those of the moderns read; the treasures of our ancestors have our esteem, and we boast the passion; those of contemporary genius engage our heart, although we blush to own it. The visits we pay the former resemble those we pay the great; the ceremony is troublesome, and yet such as we would not choose to forgo; our acquaintance with modern books is like sitting with a friend; our pride is not flattered in the interview, but it gives more internal satisfaction....
In England, where there are as many new books published as in all the rest of Europe together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns among the people; they have been often known to act like fools, they are generally found to think like men.—O. Goldsmith.Letters from a Citizen of the World.
In science read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and re-decorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.—E. G. E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton.Caxtoniana.
I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring myself to sit down to theTales of My Landlord, but now that author's works have made a considerable addition to my scanty library.... Women judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which are admired only 'in their newest gloss'. That is not my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers for mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say that I am greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe'sState Papers, in russia leather; or an ample impression of Sir William Temple'sEssays, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.... When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better), I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish—turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes andrifaccimentosof what has been served up entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus turning to a well-known author, there is not only an assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests—dearer, alas! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish ofthe work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. They are 'for thoughts and for remembrance'! They are like Fortunatus's Wishing Cap—they give us the best riches—those of Fancy; and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice!
My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this purpose a volume ofPeregrine PickleorTom Jones. Open either of them anywhere—at the memoirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture—and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes the sight of an odd volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and sets 'the puppets dallying'. Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said, that he should like very well to be young again, if he could take his experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never comes too late with years. Oh! what a privilege to be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport oneself, by the help of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when 'ignorance was bliss', and when we first got a peep at theraree-show of the world, through the glass of fiction—gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages—or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not touch! For myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they were in their lifetime—the place where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky—return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better to me—those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel.—W. Hazlitt.The Plain Speaker.
I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world for reading new books. If the public had read all those that have gone before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work twice over; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought of, I cannot enter into the pathetic complaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes no more—that the press is idle—that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer; it is farther removed from other works that I have lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so much more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon think of putting on old armour as of taking up a book not published within the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old; that they have a pleasure in being read for the first time; that they open their leaves more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put them on the shelf. This conceitseems to be followed up in practice.... The knowledge which so many other persons have of its contents deadens our curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one on which others have made up their minds for us (as if we really could have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the first to read, criticize, and pass an opinion on. Oh, delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work), to launch out into regions of thought and invention never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met a human eye before—this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out, or to face a coterie of blue-stockings in the evening, without having gone through this ordeal, or at least without hastily turning over a few of the first pages, while dressing, to be able to say that the beginning does not promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?
A new work is something in our power: we mount the bench, and sit in judgement on it; we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have not yet read it, and expect an account of it; and thus show our shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, a kind ofaccessories after the fact.—W. Hazlitt.Sketches and Essays.
By the by, I observe a point in which your taste and mine differ from each other materially. It is about new publications. I read them unwillingly. You abstain from them with difficulty, and as a matter of duty and self-denial. Their novelty has very little attraction for me; and in literature I am fond of confining myself to the best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I am desirous of becoming more intimate; andI suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again, than to read a new one for the first time. If I hear of a new poem, for instance, I ask myself first, whether it is superior to Homer, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Virgil, or Racine; and, in the next place, whether I already have all these authors completely at my fingers' ends. And when both questions have been answered in the negative, I infer that it is better (and, to me, it is certainly pleasanter) to give such time as I have to bestow on the reading of poetry to Homer, Ariosto and Co., and so of other things.
Is it not better to try, at least, to elevate and adorn one's mind, by the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to know of one's own knowledge that such a book an't worth reading?—J. W. Ward, Earl of Dudley(Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff).
The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their relative value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift withoutOedipusandMedea, while he possessesOthelloandHamlet. If he knows nothing ofPyrgopolynicesandThraso, he is familiar withBobadil, andBessus, andPistol, andParolles. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out fromNephelococcygia, he may take refuge inLilliput.... We believe that the books which have been written in the languages of Western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty years—translations from the ancient languages of course included,—are of greater value than all the books which at the beginning of that period were extant in the world.—Lord Macaulay.Lord Bacon.
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or, rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation—the act of thought—is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.—R. W. Emerson.The American Scholar.
Old books, as you well know, are books of the world's youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels? The gold has passed out of these long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was mingled.—O. W. Holmes.The Professor at the Breakfast-Table.
What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us! What a precious feeling of seclusion in having a double wall of centuries between us and the heats and clamours of contemporary literature! How limpid seems the thought, how pure the old wine of scholarship that has been settling for so many generations in those silent crypts and Falernianamphoraeof the Past! No other writers speak to us with the authority of those whose ordinary speech was that of our translation of the Scriptures; to no modern is that frank unconsciousness possible which was natural to a period when reviews were not; and no later style breathes that country charm characteristic of days ere the metropolis drew all literary activity to itself, and the trampling feet of the multitude had banished the lark and the daisy from the fresh privacies of language. Truly, as compared with the present, these old voices seem to come from the morning fields and not the paved thoroughfares of thought....
There are volumes which have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked colour and ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;—these quaint freaks of russet tell of Montaigne; these stripes of crimson fire, of Shakespeare; this sober gold, of Sir Thomas Browne; this purpling bloom, of Lamb;—in such fruits we taste the legendary gardens of Alcinoüs and the orchards of Atlas; and there are volumes again which can claim only the inglorious senility of Old Parr or older Jenkins, which have outlived their half-dozen of kings to be the prize of showmen and treasuries of the born-to-be-forgotten trifles of a hundred years ago....
There is to us a sacredness in a volume, however dull; we live over again the author's lonely labours and tremulous hopes; we see him, on his first appearance after parturition, 'as well as could be expected,' a nervous sympathy yet surviving between the late-severed umbilical cord and the wondrous offspring, doubtfully entering the Mermaid, or the Devil Tavern, or the Coffee-house of Will or Button, blushing under the eye of Ben or Dryden or Addison, as ifthey must needs know him for the author of theModest Enquiry into the Present State of Dramatique Poetry, or of theUnities briefly considered by Philomusus, of which they have never heard and never will so much as hear the names; we see the country-gentlemen (sole cause of its surviving to our day) who buy it as a book no gentleman's library can be complete without; we see the spendthrift heir, whose horses and hounds and Pharaonic troops of friends, drowned in a Red Sea of claret, bring it to the hammer, the tall octavo in tree-calf following the ancestral oaks of the park. Such a volume is sacred to us. But it must be the original foundling of the book-stall, the engraved blazon of some extinct baronetcy within its cover, its leaves enshrining memorial-flowers of some passion smothered while the Stuarts were not yet unkinged, suggestive of the trail of laced ruffles, burnt here and there with ashes from the pipe of some dozing poet, its binding worn and weather-stained, that has felt the inquisitive finger, perhaps, of Malone, or thrilled to the touch of Lamb, doubtful between desire and the odd sixpence. When it comes to a question of reprinting we are more choice. The new duodecimo is bald and bare, indeed, compared with its battered prototype that could draw us with a single hair of association.—J. R. Lowell.Library of Old Authors.
It will be looked for, book, when some but seeThy title, Epigrams, and named of me,Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall,Wormwood and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal,Become a petulant thing, hurl ink and witAs madmen stones; not caring whom they hit.Deceive their malice, who could wish it so;And by thy wiser temper let men knowThou art not covetous of least self-fame,Made from the hazard of another's shame:Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,To catch the world's loose laughter, or vain gaze.He that departs with his own honestyFor vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.Ben Jonson.
It will be looked for, book, when some but seeThy title, Epigrams, and named of me,Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall,Wormwood and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal,Become a petulant thing, hurl ink and witAs madmen stones; not caring whom they hit.Deceive their malice, who could wish it so;And by thy wiser temper let men knowThou art not covetous of least self-fame,Made from the hazard of another's shame:Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,To catch the world's loose laughter, or vain gaze.He that departs with his own honestyFor vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.
Ben Jonson.
For those my unbaptizèd rhymes,Writ in my wild unhallowed times;For every sentence, clause, and word,That's not inlaid with thee, my Lord,Forgive me, God, and blot each lineOut of my book that is not thine.But if, 'mongst all, thou findst here oneWorthy thy benediction;That one of all the rest shall beThe glory of my work and me.R. Herrick.Noble Numbers.
For those my unbaptizèd rhymes,Writ in my wild unhallowed times;For every sentence, clause, and word,That's not inlaid with thee, my Lord,Forgive me, God, and blot each lineOut of my book that is not thine.But if, 'mongst all, thou findst here oneWorthy thy benediction;That one of all the rest shall beThe glory of my work and me.
R. Herrick.Noble Numbers.
In our forefathers' time, when papistry, as a standing pool, covered and overflowed all England, few books were read in our tongue, saving certain books of chivalry, as they said for pastime and pleasure; which, as some say, were made in monasteries by idle monks or wanton canons. As one for example, 'Morte Arthur', the whole pleasure of which book standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry.... This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at, or honest men to take pleasure at: yet I know, when God's Bible was banished the court, and 'Morte Arthur' received into the prince's chamber.
What toys the daily reading of such a book may work in the will of a young gentleman, or a young maid, that liveth wealthily or idly, wise men can judge, and honest men do pity. And yet ten 'Morte Arthurs' do not the tenth part so much harm, as one of these books made in Italy and translated in England.... Suffer these books to be read, and they shall soon displace all books of godly learning.—R. Ascham.The Schoolmaster.
A good book steals the mind from vain pretences,From wicked cogitations and offences;It makes us know the world's deceiving pleasures,And set our hearts on never-ending treasures.So when thieves steal our cattle, coin, or ware,It makes us see how mutable they are:Puts us in mind that we should put our trustWhere felon cannot steal or canker rust.Bad books through eyes and ears do break and enter,And take possession of the heart's frail centre,Infecting all the little kingdom manWith all the poisonous mischief that they can,Till they have robbed and ransacked him of allThose things which men may justly goodness call;Rob him of virtue and of heavenly grace,And leave him beggared in a wretched state.So of our earthly goods, thieves steal the best,And richest jewels, and leave us the rest.Men know not thieves from true men by their looks,Nor by their outsides no man can know books.Both are to be suspected, all can tell,And wise men, ere they trust, will try them well:Some books not worth the reading for their fruits,Some thieves not worth the hanging, for their suits.And as with industry, and art, and skillOne thief doth daily rob another still,So one book from another, in this age,Steals many a line, a sentence, or a page.And as the veriest thief may have some friendSo the worst books some knave will still defend.Still books and thieves in one conceit do join,For, if you mark them, they are all for coin.J. Taylor.An Arrant Thief.
A good book steals the mind from vain pretences,From wicked cogitations and offences;It makes us know the world's deceiving pleasures,And set our hearts on never-ending treasures.So when thieves steal our cattle, coin, or ware,It makes us see how mutable they are:Puts us in mind that we should put our trustWhere felon cannot steal or canker rust.Bad books through eyes and ears do break and enter,And take possession of the heart's frail centre,Infecting all the little kingdom manWith all the poisonous mischief that they can,Till they have robbed and ransacked him of allThose things which men may justly goodness call;Rob him of virtue and of heavenly grace,And leave him beggared in a wretched state.So of our earthly goods, thieves steal the best,And richest jewels, and leave us the rest.Men know not thieves from true men by their looks,Nor by their outsides no man can know books.Both are to be suspected, all can tell,And wise men, ere they trust, will try them well:Some books not worth the reading for their fruits,Some thieves not worth the hanging, for their suits.And as with industry, and art, and skillOne thief doth daily rob another still,So one book from another, in this age,Steals many a line, a sentence, or a page.And as the veriest thief may have some friendSo the worst books some knave will still defend.
Still books and thieves in one conceit do join,For, if you mark them, they are all for coin.
J. Taylor.An Arrant Thief.
They [the Stationers] have so pestered their printing-houses and shops with fruitless volumes that the ancient and renowned authors are almost buried among them as forgotten; and that they have so much work to prefer their termly pamphlets, which they provide to take up the people's money and time, that there is neither of them left to bestow on a profitable book: so they who desire knowledge are still kept ignorant; their ignorance increaseth their affection to vain toys; their affection makes the stationer to increase his provision of such stuff, and at last you shall see nothing to be sold amongst us but Curranto'sBevis of Southamptonor such trumpery. The Arts are already almost lost among the writings of mountebank authors. For if any one among us would study Physic, the Mathematics, Poetry, or any of the liberal sciences, they have in their warehouses so many volumes of quack-salving receipts; of false propositions; and of inartificial rhymings (of which last sort they have some of mine there, God forgive me!) that unless we be directed by some artist, we shall spend half our age before we can find those authors which are worth our readings. For what need the stationer be at the charge of printing the labours of him that is master of his art, and will require that respect which his pain deserveth, seeing he can hire for a matter of forty shillings some needy ignoramus to scribble upon the same subject, and by a large promising title, make it as vendible for an impression or two, as though it had the quintessence of all art?—G. Wither.The Scholler's Purgatory.
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.Arius Montanus, in printing the Hebrew Bible, commonly called the Bible of the king of Spain, much wasted himself, and was accused in the court of Rome for his good deed, and being cited thither,Pro tantorum laborum praemio vix veniam impetravit. Likewise Christopher Plantin, by printing of his curious interlineary Bible in Antwerp, through the unseasonable exactions of the king's officers, sunk and almost ruined his estate. And our worthy English knight, who set forth the golden-mouthed father in a silver print, was a loser by it.
Whereas foolish pamphlets prove most beneficial to the printers.When a French printer complained that he was utterly undone by printing a solid serious book of Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him recompense, made that his jesting scurrilous work, which repaired the printer's loss with advantage. Such books the world swarms too much with. When one had set out a witlesspamphlet, writingfinisat the end thereof, another wittily wrote beneath it:
——Nay there thou liest, my friend,In writing foolish books there is no end.
——Nay there thou liest, my friend,In writing foolish books there is no end.
And surely such scurrilous scandalous papers do more than conceivable mischief. First, their lusciousness puts many palates out of taste, that they can never after relish any solid and wholesome writers; secondly, they cast dirt on the faces of many innocent persons, which dried on by continuance of time can never after be washed off; thirdly, the pamphlets of this age may pass for records with the next, because publicly uncontrolled, and what we laugh at, our children may believe: fourthly, grant the things true they jeer at, yet this music is unlawful in any Christian church, to play upon the sins and miseries of others, the fitter object of the elegies than the satires of all truly religious.—T. Fuller.The Holy State and the Profane State.
If writings are thus durable, and may pass from age to age throughout the whole course of time, how careful should an author be of committing anything to print that may corrupt posterity, or poison the minds of men with vice and error! Writers of great talents, who employ their parts in propagating immorality, and seasoning vicious sentiments with wit and humour, are to be looked upon as the pests of society and the enemies of mankind: they leave books behind them, as it is said of those who die in distempers which breed an ill will towards their own species, to scatter infection and destroy their posterity. They act the counterparts of a Confucius or a Socrates; and seem to have been sent into the world to deprave human nature, and sink it into the condition of brutality.—J. Addison.Spectator, 166.
He who has published an injurious book, sins, as it were, in his very grave; corrupts others while he is rotting himself.—R. South.
A mind unnerved, or indisposed to bearThe weight of subjects worthiest of her care,Whatever hopes a change of scene inspires,Must change her nature, or in vain retires.An idler is a watch that wants both hands,As useless if it goes as when it stands,Books therefore, not the scandal of the shelves,In which lewd sensualists print out themselves;Nor those in which the stage gives vice a blow,With what success let modern manners show;Nor his who, for the bane of thousands born,Built God a church, and laughed His word to scorn,Skilful alike to seem devout and just,And stab religion with a sly side-thrust;Nor those of learned philologists, who chaseA panting syllable through time and space,Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark;But such as learning without false pretence,The friend of truth, the associate of sound sense,And such as, in the zeal of good design,Strong judgement labouring in the scripture mine,All such as manly and great souls produce,Worthy to live, and of eternal use:Behold in these what leisure hours demand,Amusement and true knowledge hand in hand.Luxury gives the mind a childish cast,And while she polishes, perverts the taste;Habits of close attention, thinking heads,Become more rare as dissipation spreads,Till authors hear at length, one gen'ral cry,Tickle and entertain us, or we die.The loud demand, from year to year the same,Beggars invention and makes fancy lame,Till farce itself, most mournfully jejune,Calls for the kind assistance of a tune;And novels (witness every month's review)Belie their name and offer nothing new.The mind, relaxing into needful sport,Should turn to writers of an abler sort,Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.Friends (for I cannot stint, as some have done,Too rigid in my view, that name to one;Though one, I grant it, in the generous breast,Will stand advanced a step above the rest:Flowers by that name promiscuously we call,But one, the rose, the regent of them all)—Friends, not adopted with a school-boy's haste,But chosen with a nice discerning taste,Well-born, well-disciplined, who, placed apartFrom vulgar minds, have honour much at heart,And, though the world may think the ingredients odd,The love of virtue, and the fear of God!Such friends prevent what else would soon succeed,A temper rustic as the life we lead,And keep the polish of the manners clean,As their's who bustle in the busiest scene;For solitude, however some may rave,Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave,A sepulchre in which the living lie,Where all good qualities grow sick and die.W. Cowper,Retirement.
A mind unnerved, or indisposed to bearThe weight of subjects worthiest of her care,Whatever hopes a change of scene inspires,Must change her nature, or in vain retires.An idler is a watch that wants both hands,As useless if it goes as when it stands,Books therefore, not the scandal of the shelves,In which lewd sensualists print out themselves;Nor those in which the stage gives vice a blow,With what success let modern manners show;Nor his who, for the bane of thousands born,Built God a church, and laughed His word to scorn,Skilful alike to seem devout and just,And stab religion with a sly side-thrust;Nor those of learned philologists, who chaseA panting syllable through time and space,Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark;But such as learning without false pretence,The friend of truth, the associate of sound sense,And such as, in the zeal of good design,Strong judgement labouring in the scripture mine,All such as manly and great souls produce,Worthy to live, and of eternal use:Behold in these what leisure hours demand,Amusement and true knowledge hand in hand.Luxury gives the mind a childish cast,And while she polishes, perverts the taste;Habits of close attention, thinking heads,Become more rare as dissipation spreads,Till authors hear at length, one gen'ral cry,Tickle and entertain us, or we die.The loud demand, from year to year the same,Beggars invention and makes fancy lame,Till farce itself, most mournfully jejune,Calls for the kind assistance of a tune;And novels (witness every month's review)Belie their name and offer nothing new.The mind, relaxing into needful sport,Should turn to writers of an abler sort,Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.Friends (for I cannot stint, as some have done,Too rigid in my view, that name to one;Though one, I grant it, in the generous breast,Will stand advanced a step above the rest:Flowers by that name promiscuously we call,But one, the rose, the regent of them all)—Friends, not adopted with a school-boy's haste,But chosen with a nice discerning taste,Well-born, well-disciplined, who, placed apartFrom vulgar minds, have honour much at heart,And, though the world may think the ingredients odd,The love of virtue, and the fear of God!Such friends prevent what else would soon succeed,A temper rustic as the life we lead,And keep the polish of the manners clean,As their's who bustle in the busiest scene;For solitude, however some may rave,Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave,A sepulchre in which the living lie,Where all good qualities grow sick and die.
W. Cowper,Retirement.