I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakespeare—a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading theFairy Queen?—but, the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called; commending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian Christians, no matter where assembled.—C. Lamb.Grace before Meat.
These friends of mine regard the pleasures of the world as the supreme good; they do not comprehend that it is possible to renounce these pleasures. They are ignorant of my resources. I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command. They come at my call, and return when I desire them: they are never out of humour, and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature: these teach mehow to live, and those how to die: these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit: and some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open a door to all the arts and sciences. As a reward for such great services, they require only a corner of my little house, where they may be safely sheltered from the depredations of their enemies. In fine, I carry them with me into the fields, the silence of which suits them better than the business and tumults of cities.—Petrarch.Lifeby S. Dodson.
Here is the best solitary company in the world: and in this particular chiefly excelling any other, that in my study I am sure to converse with none but wise men; but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools. What an advantage have I by this good fellowship that, besides the help which I receive from hence, in reference to my life after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I lived!—that I can be acquainted with the passages of three or four thousand years ago, as if they were the weekly occurrences! Here, without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of those times; the learnedest philosophers, the wisest counsellors, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best jewels they have in their treasury, with the same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, without suspicion of felony, make use of them as mine own. I can here, without trespassing, go into their vineyards, and not only eat my fill of their grapes for my pleasure, but put up as much as I will in my vessel, and store it up for my profit and advantage.
How doth this prospect at once set off the goodness of God to me, and discover mine own weakness? His goodness in providing these helps for the improvement of mine understanding; and my weakness in needing them. What a pitiful, simple creature am I, that cannot live to any purpose, without the help of so many other men's brains! Lord, let this be the first lesson that I learn from thesesilent counsellors, to know my own ignorance: other knowledge puffeth up, this edifieth.—Sir W. Waller.Divine Meditations.
The calling of a scholar ... fitteth a man for all conditions and fortunes; so that he can enjoy prosperity with moderation, and sustain adversity with comfort: he that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.... The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries, who thereby communicate to us their most deliberate thoughts, choicest notions, and best inventions, couched in good expression, and digested in exact method? The perusal of history, how pleasant illumination of mind, how useful direction of life, how spritely incentives to virtue doth it afford! How doth it supply the room of experience, and furnish us with prudence at the expense of others, informing us about the ways of action, and the consequences thereof by examples, without our own danger or trouble!—I. Barrow.Of Industry in our Particular Calling as Scholars.
I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead,—who yet live and speak excellently in their works.—My neighbours think meoften alone,—and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes—each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs—quite as intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of words.—They always keep the distance from me which I direct,—and, with a motion of my hand, I can bring them as near to me as I please.—I lay hands on fifty of them sometimes in an evening, and handle them as I like;—they never complain of ill-usage,—and, when dismissed from my presence—though ever so abruptly—take no offence. Such convenience is not to be enjoyed—nor such liberty to be taken—with the living.—L. Sterne.Letters.
I read with more pleasure than ever; perhaps, because it is the only pleasure I have left. For, since I am struck out of living company by my deafness, I have recourse to the dead, whom alone I can hear; and I have assigned them their stated hours of audience. Solidfoliosare the people of business, with whom I converse in the morning.Quartosare the easier mixed company, with whom I sit after dinner; and I pass my evenings in the light, and often frivolous,chit-chatof smalloctavosandduodecimos.—Lord Chesterfield.
I armed her [Olivia] against the censure of the world, showed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it.—O. Goldsmith.The Vicar of Wakefield.
My days among the Dead are passed;Around me I behold,Where'er these casual eyes are cast,The mighty minds of old;My never-failing friends are they,With whom I converse day by day.With them I take delight in weal,And seek relief in woe;And while I understand and feelHow much to them I owe,My cheeks have often been bedewedWith tears of thoughtful gratitude.My thoughts are with the Dead; with themI live in long-past years,Their virtues love, their faults condemn,Partake their hopes and fears,And from their lessons seek and findInstruction with an humble mind.My hopes are with the Dead; anonMy place with them will be.And I with them shall travel onThrough all Futurity;Yet leaving here a name, I trust,That will not perish in the dust.R. Southey.
My days among the Dead are passed;Around me I behold,Where'er these casual eyes are cast,The mighty minds of old;My never-failing friends are they,With whom I converse day by day.
With them I take delight in weal,And seek relief in woe;And while I understand and feelHow much to them I owe,My cheeks have often been bedewedWith tears of thoughtful gratitude.
My thoughts are with the Dead; with themI live in long-past years,Their virtues love, their faults condemn,Partake their hopes and fears,And from their lessons seek and findInstruction with an humble mind.
My hopes are with the Dead; anonMy place with them will be.And I with them shall travel onThrough all Futurity;Yet leaving here a name, I trust,That will not perish in the dust.
R. Southey.
R. Southey.
Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery! What is that to the opening a box of books! The joy upon lifting up the cover must be something like what we shall feel when Peter the Porter opens the door upstairs, and says, Please to walk in, sir. That I shall never be paid for my labour according to the current value of time and labour, is tolerably certain; but if any one should offer me £10,000 to forgo that labour, I should bid him and his money go to the devil, for twice the sum could not purchase me half the enjoyment. It will be a great delight to me in the next world, to take a fly and visit these old worthies, who are my only society here, and to tell them what excellent company I found them here at the lakes of Cumberland, two centuries after they had been dead and turned to dust. In plain truth, I exist more among the dead than the living, and think more about them, and, perhaps, feel more about them.—R. Southey(Letter to S. T. Coleridge).
Coleridge is gone to Devonshire, and I was going to say I am alone, but that the sight of Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Milton, and the Bible, on my table, and Castanheda, and Barros, and Osorio at my elbow, tell me I am in the best of all possible company.—R. Southey(Letter to G. C. Bedford).
Worthy booksAre not companions—they are solitudes;We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.P. J. Bailey.Festus.
Worthy booksAre not companions—they are solitudes;We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.
P. J. Bailey.Festus.
P. J. Bailey.Festus.
What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the world without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search for and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still we take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again, as we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing this visit will be the favoured hour and all will be told us....
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;—book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned.—A. B. Alcott.Tablets.
There are books which are of that importance in a man's private experience, as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius Agrippa, of Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus of Thrace,—books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative,—books which are the work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, so nearly equal to the world which they paint, that, though one shuts them with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion from them to accuse his way of living.
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.—R. W. Emerson.Books.
We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.—C. C. Colton.Lacon.
One, with his beard scarce silvered, boreA ready credence in his looks,A lettered magnate, lording o'erAn ever-widening realm of books.In him brain-currents, near and far,Converged as in a Leyden jar;The old, dead authors thronged him round about,And Elzevir's grey ghosts from leathern graves looked out.He knew each living pundit well,Could weigh the gifts of him or her,And well the market value tellOf poet and philosopher.But if he lost, the scenes behind,Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,Finding the actors human at the best,No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.His boyhood fancies not outgrown,He loved himself the singer's art;Tenderly, gently, by his ownHe knew and judged an author's heart.No Rhadamanthine brow of doomBowed the dazed pedant from his room;And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.Pleasant it was to roam aboutThe lettered world as he had done,And see the lords of song withoutTheir singing robes and garlands on.With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.J. G. WHITTIER.The Tent on the Beach.
One, with his beard scarce silvered, boreA ready credence in his looks,A lettered magnate, lording o'erAn ever-widening realm of books.In him brain-currents, near and far,Converged as in a Leyden jar;The old, dead authors thronged him round about,And Elzevir's grey ghosts from leathern graves looked out.
He knew each living pundit well,Could weigh the gifts of him or her,And well the market value tellOf poet and philosopher.But if he lost, the scenes behind,Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,Finding the actors human at the best,No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.
His boyhood fancies not outgrown,He loved himself the singer's art;Tenderly, gently, by his ownHe knew and judged an author's heart.No Rhadamanthine brow of doomBowed the dazed pedant from his room;And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.
Pleasant it was to roam aboutThe lettered world as he had done,And see the lords of song withoutTheir singing robes and garlands on.With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.
J. G. WHITTIER.The Tent on the Beach.
Choose an author as you choose a friend.—W. Dillon,Earl of Roscommon.Essay on Translated Verse.
Choose an author as you choose a friend.—W. Dillon,Earl of Roscommon.Essay on Translated Verse.
All round the room my silent servants wait,—My friends in every season, bright and dim;Angels and seraphimCome down and murmur to me, sweet and low,And spirits of the skies all come and goEarly and late;From the old world's divine and distant date,From the sublimer few,Down to the poet who but yester-eveSang sweet and made us grieve,All come, assembling here in order due.And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,With Erato and all her vernal sighs,Great Clio with her victories elate,Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes.Oh friends, whom chance and change can never harm,Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die,Within whose folding soft eternal charmI love to lie,And meditate upon your verse that flows,And fertilizes whereso'er it goes....B. W. Procter.An Autobiographical Fragment.
All round the room my silent servants wait,—My friends in every season, bright and dim;Angels and seraphimCome down and murmur to me, sweet and low,And spirits of the skies all come and goEarly and late;From the old world's divine and distant date,From the sublimer few,Down to the poet who but yester-eveSang sweet and made us grieve,All come, assembling here in order due.And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,With Erato and all her vernal sighs,Great Clio with her victories elate,Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes.Oh friends, whom chance and change can never harm,Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die,Within whose folding soft eternal charmI love to lie,And meditate upon your verse that flows,And fertilizes whereso'er it goes....
B. W. Procter.An Autobiographical Fragment.
Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends who can never alter or forsake,Who for inconstant roving have no power,And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,—Let me return toyou, this turmoil ending,Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,And, o'er your old familiar pages bending,Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought;Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,Fancies, the audible echo of my own,'Twill be like hearing in a foreign climeMy native language spoke in friendly tone,And with a sort of welcome I shall dwellOn these, my unripe musings, told so well.The Hon. Caroline Norton.
Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends who can never alter or forsake,Who for inconstant roving have no power,And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,—Let me return toyou, this turmoil ending,Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,And, o'er your old familiar pages bending,Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought;Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,Fancies, the audible echo of my own,'Twill be like hearing in a foreign climeMy native language spoke in friendly tone,And with a sort of welcome I shall dwellOn these, my unripe musings, told so well.
The Hon. Caroline Norton.
Ye dear companions of my silent hours,Whose pages oft before my eyes would strewSo many sweet and variegated flowers—Dear Books, awhile, perhaps for ay, adieu!The dark cloud of misfortune o'er me lours:No more by winter's fire—in summer's bowers,My toil-worn mind shall be refreshed by you:We part! sad thought! and while the damp devoursYour leaves, and the worm slowly eats them through,Dull Poverty and its attendant ills,Wasting of health, vain toil, corroding care,And the world's cold neglect, which surest kills,Must be my bitter doom; yet I shall bearUnmurmuring, for my good perchance these evils are.J. H. Leigh Hunt.
Ye dear companions of my silent hours,Whose pages oft before my eyes would strewSo many sweet and variegated flowers—Dear Books, awhile, perhaps for ay, adieu!The dark cloud of misfortune o'er me lours:No more by winter's fire—in summer's bowers,My toil-worn mind shall be refreshed by you:We part! sad thought! and while the damp devoursYour leaves, and the worm slowly eats them through,Dull Poverty and its attendant ills,Wasting of health, vain toil, corroding care,And the world's cold neglect, which surest kills,Must be my bitter doom; yet I shall bearUnmurmuring, for my good perchance these evils are.
J. H. Leigh Hunt.
As one who, destined from his friends to part,Regrets his loss, yet hopes again erewhile,To share their converse and enjoy their smile,And tempers as he may affliction's dart,—Thus, loved associates! chiefs of elder Art!Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguileMy tedious hours, and lighten every toil,I now resign you; nor with fainting heart;For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,And all your sacred fellowship restore;When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,And kindred spirits meet to part no more.—W. Roscoe.
As one who, destined from his friends to part,Regrets his loss, yet hopes again erewhile,To share their converse and enjoy their smile,And tempers as he may affliction's dart,—Thus, loved associates! chiefs of elder Art!Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguileMy tedious hours, and lighten every toil,I now resign you; nor with fainting heart;For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,And all your sacred fellowship restore;When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,And kindred spirits meet to part no more.—W. Roscoe.
It is a beautiful incident in the story of Mr. Roscoe's misfortunes, and one which cannot fail to interest the studious mind, that the parting with his books seems to have touched upon his tenderest feelings, and to have been the only circumstance that could provoke the notice of hisMuse. The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow.—W. Irving.The Sketch Book.
Sadly as some old mediaeval knightGazed at the arms he could no longer wield,The sword two-handed and the shining shieldSuspended in the hall, and full in sight,While secret longings for the lost delightOf tourney or adventure in the fieldCame over him, and tears but half concealedTrembled and fell upon his beard of white,So I behold these books upon their shelf,My ornaments and arms of other days;Not wholly useless, though no longer used,For they remind me of my other self,Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways,In which I walked, now clouded and confused.H. W. Longfellow.
Sadly as some old mediaeval knightGazed at the arms he could no longer wield,The sword two-handed and the shining shieldSuspended in the hall, and full in sight,While secret longings for the lost delightOf tourney or adventure in the fieldCame over him, and tears but half concealedTrembled and fell upon his beard of white,So I behold these books upon their shelf,My ornaments and arms of other days;Not wholly useless, though no longer used,For they remind me of my other self,Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways,In which I walked, now clouded and confused.
H. W. Longfellow.
When I would know thee, Goodyer, my thought looksUpon thy well-made choice of friends, and books;Then do I love thee, and behold thy endsIn making thy friends books, and thy books friends:Now must I give thy life and deed the voiceAttending such a study, such a choice;Where, though it be love that to thy praise doth move,It was a knowledge that begat that love.Ben Jonson.
When I would know thee, Goodyer, my thought looksUpon thy well-made choice of friends, and books;Then do I love thee, and behold thy endsIn making thy friends books, and thy books friends:Now must I give thy life and deed the voiceAttending such a study, such a choice;Where, though it be love that to thy praise doth move,It was a knowledge that begat that love.
Ben Jonson.
While you converse with lords and dukes,I have their betters here—my books;Fixed in an elbow chair at easeI choose my companions as I please.I'd rather have one single shelfThan all my friends, except yourself;For after all that can be saidOur best acquaintance are the dead.T. Sheridan.
While you converse with lords and dukes,I have their betters here—my books;Fixed in an elbow chair at easeI choose my companions as I please.I'd rather have one single shelfThan all my friends, except yourself;For after all that can be saidOur best acquaintance are the dead.
T. Sheridan.
In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past. I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander; I feel the ground shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre,—the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquerors! I hiss or cry 'Bravo' when the great actors come on shaking the stage. I am a Roman Emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral procession—all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a silence in those old books as of a half-peopled world—what bleating of flocks—what green pastoral rest—what indubitable human existence! Across brawling centuries of blood and war, I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah'scamels. O men and women, so far separated, yet so near, so strange, yet so well-known, by what miraculous power do I know ye all! Books are the true Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company? What school of philosophy such wisdom? The wit of the ancient world is glancing and flashing there. There is Pan's pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural. They are not collections of printed pages, they are ghosts. I take one down and it speaks with me in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone possesses knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misapply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levees.—A. Smith.Dreamthorp.
One drachma for a good book, and a thousand talents for a true friend;—So standeth the market, where scarce is ever costly:Yea, were the diamonds of Golconda common as shingles on the shore,A ripe apple would ransom kings before a shining stone:And so, were a wholesome book as rare as an honest friend,To choose the book be mine: the friend let another take.M. F. Tupper.Proverbial Philosophy.
One drachma for a good book, and a thousand talents for a true friend;—So standeth the market, where scarce is ever costly:Yea, were the diamonds of Golconda common as shingles on the shore,A ripe apple would ransom kings before a shining stone:And so, were a wholesome book as rare as an honest friend,To choose the book be mine: the friend let another take.
M. F. Tupper.Proverbial Philosophy.
A blessed companion is a book,—a book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend.—D. Jerrold.Books.
May I a small house and large garden have!And a few friends, and many books, both true.A. Cowley.The Wish.
May I a small house and large garden have!And a few friends, and many books, both true.
A. Cowley.The Wish.
O celestial gift of divine liberality, descending from the Father of light to raise up the rational soul even to heaven!... Undoubtedly, indeed, thou hast placed thy desirable tabernacle in books, where the Most High, the Light of light, the Book of Life, hath established thee. Here then all who ask receive, all who seek find thee, to those who knock thou openest quickly. In books cherubim expand their wings, that the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to pole, from the rising to the setting sun, from the north and from the sea. In them the most high incomprehensible God Himself is contained and worshipped....
Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.—R. de Bury.Philobiblon.
Books are a part of man's prerogative,In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,That we to them our solitude may give,And make time present travel that of old.Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,And books it farther backward do extend.Sir T. Overbury.The Wife.
Books are a part of man's prerogative,In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,That we to them our solitude may give,And make time present travel that of old.Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,And books it farther backward do extend.
Sir T. Overbury.The Wife.
Bright books: the perspectives to our weak sights,The clear projections of discerning lights,Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day,The track of fled souls and their Milky Way,The dead alive and busy, the still voiceOf enlarged spirits, kind Heaven's white decoys!Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flowers,Which in commerce with light spend all their hours;Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun,But with glad haste unveil to kiss the Sun.Beneath you, all is dark, and a dead night,Which whoso lives in, wants both health and sight.By sucking you the wise, like bees, do growHealing and rich, though this they do most slow,Because most choicely; for as great a storeHave we of books as bees of herbs, or more;And the great task to try, then know, the good,To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food,Is a rare scant performance: for man diesOft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flies.But you were all choice flowers; all set and dressedBy old sage florists, who well knew the best;And I amidst you all am turned a weed!Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed.Then thank thyself, wild fool, that wouldst not beContent to know—what was too much for thee.H. Vaughan.
Bright books: the perspectives to our weak sights,The clear projections of discerning lights,Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day,The track of fled souls and their Milky Way,The dead alive and busy, the still voiceOf enlarged spirits, kind Heaven's white decoys!Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flowers,Which in commerce with light spend all their hours;Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun,But with glad haste unveil to kiss the Sun.Beneath you, all is dark, and a dead night,Which whoso lives in, wants both health and sight.By sucking you the wise, like bees, do growHealing and rich, though this they do most slow,Because most choicely; for as great a storeHave we of books as bees of herbs, or more;And the great task to try, then know, the good,To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food,Is a rare scant performance: for man diesOft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flies.But you were all choice flowers; all set and dressedBy old sage florists, who well knew the best;And I amidst you all am turned a weed!Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed.Then thank thyself, wild fool, that wouldst not beContent to know—what was too much for thee.
H. Vaughan.
Quod nec Iovis ira, nec ignis,Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.—Ovid.
Quod nec Iovis ira, nec ignis,Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.—Ovid.
Aristotle tells us, that the world is a copy or transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man are a transcript of the world. To this we may add, that words are the transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing is the transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has expressed, and as it were printed, his ideas in the creation, men express their ideas in books, which, by this great invention of these latter ages, may last as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in the general wreck of nature. Thus Cowley, in his poem on the Resurrection, mentioning the destruction of the universe, has these admirable lines:
Now all the wide extended sky,And all the harmonious worlds on highAnd Virgil's sacred work shall die.
Now all the wide extended sky,And all the harmonious worlds on highAnd Virgil's sacred work shall die.
There is no other method of fixing those thoughts which arise and disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting them to the last periods of time; no other method of giving a permanency to our ideas, and preserving the knowledge of any particular person, when his body is mixed with the common mass of matter, and his soul retired into the world of spirits. Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.—J. Addison.Spectator, 166.
O happy be the day which gave that mindLearning's first tincture—blest thy fostering care,Thou most beloved of parents, worthiest sire!Which, taste-inspiring, made the lettered pageMy favourite companion: most esteemed,And most improving! Almost from the dayOf earliest childhood to the present hourOf gloomy, black misfortune, books, dear books,Have been, and are, my comforts. Morn and night,Adversity, prosperity, at home,Abroad, health, sickness,—good or ill report,The same firm friends; the same refreshment richAnd source of consolation. Nay, e'en hereTheir magic power they lose not; still the same,Of matchless influence in this prison-house,Unutterably horrid; in an hourOf woe, beyond all fancy's fictions drear.W. Dodd.Thoughts in Prison.
O happy be the day which gave that mindLearning's first tincture—blest thy fostering care,Thou most beloved of parents, worthiest sire!Which, taste-inspiring, made the lettered pageMy favourite companion: most esteemed,And most improving! Almost from the dayOf earliest childhood to the present hourOf gloomy, black misfortune, books, dear books,Have been, and are, my comforts. Morn and night,Adversity, prosperity, at home,Abroad, health, sickness,—good or ill report,The same firm friends; the same refreshment richAnd source of consolation. Nay, e'en hereTheir magic power they lose not; still the same,Of matchless influence in this prison-house,Unutterably horrid; in an hourOf woe, beyond all fancy's fictions drear.
W. Dodd.Thoughts in Prison.
Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man. Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves reading has everything within his reach. He has but to desire; and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to perform....
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They present direct ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson; when I read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual chameleon, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He that revels in a well-chosen library has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile, susceptible to every impression, and gaining new refinement from them all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers, whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous.—W. Godwin.The Inquirer: Of an Early Taste for Reading.
There is a period of modern times, at which the love of books appears to have been of a more decided nature than at either of these—I mean the age just before and after the Reformation, or rather all that period when book-writing was confined to the learned languages. Erasmus is the god of it. Bacon, a mighty book-man, saw, among his other sights, the great advantage of loosening the vernacular tongue, and wrote both Latin and English. I allow this is the greatest closeted age of books; of old scholars sitting in dusty studies; of heaps of 'illustrious obscure', rendering themselves more illustrious and more obscure by retreating from the 'thorny queaches' of Dutch and German names into the 'vacant interlunar caves' of appellations latinized or translated. I think I see all their volumes now, filling the shelves of a dozen German convents. The authors are bearded men, sitting in old wood-cuts, in caps and gowns, and their books are dedicated to princes and statesmen, as illustrious as themselves. My old friend Wierus, who wrote a thick book,De PraestigiisDaemonum, was one of them, and had a fancy worthy of his sedentary stomach. I will confess, once for all, that I have a liking for them all. It is my link with the bibliomaniacs, whom I admit into our relationship, because my love is large and my family pride nothing. But still I take my idea of books read with a gusto, of companions for bed and board, from the two ages beforementioned. The other is of too book-worm a description. There must be both a judgement and a fervour; a discrimination and a boyish eagerness; and (with all due humility) something of a point of contact between authors worth reading and the reader. How can I take Juvenal into the fields, or ValcarenghiusDe Aortae Aneurismateto bed with me? How could I expect to walk before the face of nature with the one; to tire my elbow properly with the other, before I put out my candle and turn round deliciously on the right side? Or how could I stick upCoke upon Littletonagainst something on the dinner-table, and be divided between a fresh paragraph and a mouthful of salad?—J. H. Leigh Hunt.My Books.
To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own.Lord Foppington in 'The Relapse'.
An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.
I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read any thing which I call abook. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.
In this catalogue ofbooks which are no books—biblia a-biblia—I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which 'no gentleman's library should be without'; the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley'sMoral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.
I confess that it moves my spleen to see thesethings in books' clothingperched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what 'seem its leaves', to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find—Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.—C. Lamb.Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
I am not prepared to back Charles Lamb's Index Expurgatorius. It is difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be applied. I know books that are curious, and really amusing, from their excessive badness. If you want to find precisely how a thing ought not to be said, you take one of them down and make it perform the service of the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some volumes in which, at a chance opening, you are certain to find a mere platitude delivered in the most superb and amazing climax of big words, and others in which youhave a like happy facility in finding every proposition stated with its stern forward, as sailors say, or in some other grotesque mismanagement of composition. There are no better farces on or off the stage than when two or three congenial spirits ransack books of this kind, and compete with each other in taking fun out of them.—J. H. Burton.The Book-Hunter.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.
To make this means of culture effectual a man must select good books, such as have been written by right-minded and strong-minded men, real thinkers, who instead of diluting by repetition what others say, have something to say for themselves, and write to give relief to full, earnest souls; and these works must not be skimmed over for amusement, but read with fixed attention and a reverential love of truth. In selecting books we may be aided much by those who have studied more than ourselves. But, after all, it is best to be determined in this particular a good deal by our own tastes.—W. E. Channing.Self-Culture.
I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.... We conceive of Plato as a lover of books; of Aristotle certainly; of Plutarch, Pliny, Horace, Julian, and Marcus Aurelius. Virgil, too, must have been one; and, after a fashion, Martial. May I confess that the passage which I recollect with the greatest pleasure in Cicero, is where he says that books delight us at home,and are no impediment abroad; travel with us, ruralize with us. His period is rounded off to some purpose: 'Delectant domi, non impediunt foris; peregrinantur, rusticantur.' I am so much of this opinion, that I do not care to be anywhere without having a book or books at hand, and like Dr. Orkborne, in the novel ofCamilla, stuff the coach or post-chaise with them whenever I travel. As books, however, become ancient, the love of them becomes more unequivocal and conspicuous. The ancients had little of what we call learning. They made it. They were also no very eminent buyers of books—they made books for posterity. It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much. The scholar, in Chaucer, who would rather have