As fame reports it, with the Gods.
    Him frantic hunger wildly drives
    Against a thousand authors' lives:
    Through all the fields of wit he flies;
    Dreadful his head with clustering eyes,
    With horns without, and tusks within,
    And scales to serve him for a skin.
    Observe him nearly, lest he climb
    To wound the bards of ancient time,
    Or down the vale of fancy go
    To tear some modern wretch below.
    On every corner fix thine eye,
    Or ten to one he slips thee by.
    See where his teeth a passage eat:
    We'll rouse him from his deep retreat.
    But who the shelter's forced to give?
    'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live!
    From leaf to leaf, from song to song,
    He draws the tadpole form along,
    He mounts the gilded edge before,
    He's up, he scuds the cover o'er,
    He turns, he doubles, there he passed,
    And here we have him, caught at last.

    Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse
    The sweetest servants of the Muse--
    Nay, never offer to deny,
    I took thee in the act to fly.
    His roses nipped in every page,
    My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage;
    By thee my Ovid wounded lies;
    By thee my Lesbia's Sparrow dies;
    Thy rabid teeth have half destroyed
    The work of love in Biddy Floyd;
    They rent Belinda's locks away,
    And spoiled the Blouzelind of Gay.
    For all, for every single deed,
    Relentless justice bids thee bleed:
    Then fall a victim to the Nine,
    Myself the priest, my desk the shrine.

    Bring Homer, Virgil, Tasso near,
    To pile a sacred altar here:
    Hold, boy, thy hand outruns thy wit,
    You reached the plays that Dennis writ;
    You reached me Philips' rustic strain;
    Pray take your mortal bards again.

    Come, bind the victim,--there he lies,
    And here between his numerous eyes
    This venerable dust I lay
    From manuscripts just swept away.
    The goblet in my hand I take,
    For the libation's yet to make:
    A health to poets! all their days
    May they have bread, as well as praise;
    Sense may they seek, and less engage
    In papers filled with party rage.
    But if their riches spoil their vein,
    Ye Muses, make them poor again.

    Now bring the weapon, yonder blade
    With which my tuneful pens are made.
    I strike the scales that arm thee round,
    And twice and thrice I print the wound;
    The sacred altar floats with red,
    And now he dies, and now he's dead.

    How like the son of Jove I stand,
    This Hydra stretched beneath the hand!
    Lay bare the monster's entrails here,
    And see what dangers threat the year:
    Ye gods! what sonnets on a wench!
    What lean translations out of French!
    'Tis plain, this lobe is so unsound,
    S-- prints, before the months go round.

    But hold, before I close the scene
    The sacred altar should be clean.
    O had I Shadwell's second bays,
    Or, Tate, thy pert and humble lays!
    (Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow
    I never missed your works till now,)
    I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine,
    That only way you please the Nine:
    But since I chance to want these two,
    I'll make the songs of D'Urfey do.

    Rent from the corpse, on yonder pin,
    I hang the scales that braced it in;
    I hang my studious morning gown,
    And write my own inscription down.
    'This trophy from the Python won,
    This robe, in which the deed was done,
    These, Parnell, glorying in the feat,
    Hung on these shelves, the Muses' seat.
    Here Ignorance and Hunger found
    Large realms of wit to ravage round;
    Here Ignorance and Hunger fell,
    Two foes in one I sent to hell.
    Ye poets who my labours see
    Come share the triumph all with me!
    Ye critics, born to vex the Muse,
    Go mourn the grand ally you lose!'

                    T. PARNELL.


A MOTH

    Here he beholds in triumph sit
    The bane of beauty, sense, and wit;
    Demolished distichs round his head,
    Half lines and shattered stanzas spread,
    While the insulting conqueror climbs
    O'er mighty heaps of ruined rhymes,
    And, proudly mounted, views from high,
    Beneath, the harmonious fragments lie;
    Boasting himself from foes secured,
    In stanzas lodged, in verse immured.

                W. KING (?) _Bibliotheca._


THE CURE FOR BOOKWORMS

    There is a sort of busy worm
    That will the fairest books deform,
      By gnawing holes throughout them;
    Alike through every leaf they go,
    Yet of its merits naught they know,
      Nor care they aught about them.

    Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint
    The poet, patriot, sage, or saint,
      Nor sparing wit nor learning:
    Now, if you'd know the reason why,
    The best of reasons I'll supply--
      'Tis bread to the poor vermin.

    Of pepper, snuff, or 'bacca smoke,
    And russia-calf they make a joke.
      Yet why should sons of science
    These puny, rankling reptiles dread?
    'Tis but to let their books be read,
      And bid the worms defiance.

                     J. F. M. DOVASTON.


ROYAL PATRONAGE OF BOOKS

Queen Charlotte, when discussing books with Fanny Burney and Mrs.
Delany, during the former's residence at Court at Windsor, praised the
work of a writer who had translated a German book into English, saying
'I wish I knew the translator,' to which Miss Burney replied, 'I wish
the translator knew that!'

'Oh,' said the Queen,--'it is not--I should not like to give my name,
for fear I have judged ill: I picked it up on a stall. Oh, it is amazing
what good books there are on stalls.'

'It is amazing to me,' said Mrs. Delany, 'to hear that.'

'Why, I don't pick them up myself; but I have a servant very clever; and
if they are not to be had at the bookseller's, they are not for me any
more than for another.'--From MADAME D'ARBLAY. _Diary._


THE TREASURE

Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till
all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare--and all
because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late
at night from Barker's in Covent-garden? Do you remember how we eyed it
for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not
come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday
night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too
late--and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop,
and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-wards) lighted out
the relic from his dusty treasures--and when you lugged it home, wishing
it were twice as cumbersome--and when you presented it to me--and when
we were exploring the perfectness of it (_collating_ you called it)--and
while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your
impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak--was there no
pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes, which you
wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich
and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it
about in that over-worn suit--your old corbeau--for four or five weeks
longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the
mighty sum of fifteen--or sixteen shillings was it?--a great affair we
thought it then--which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can
afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever
bring me home any nice old purchases now.--C. LAMB. _Old China._


THE MOST VALUABLE BOOK

We ought not to get books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth
half so much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a
bookstall, and bought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's
fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book.--J. RUSKIN.
_Political Economy of Art (A Joy for Ever)._


THE READERS AT THE BOOKSTALL

There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate without
affection--the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a
book, filch a little learning at the open stalls--the owner, with his
hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when
they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting
every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to
deny themselves the gratification, they 'snatch a fearful joy'. Martin
B----, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of
Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking
him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work.
M. declares that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a
book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches.
A quaint poetess of our day has moralized upon this subject in two very
touching but homely stanzas:

    I saw a boy with eager eye
    Open a book upon a stall,
    And read, as he'd devour it all;
    Which when the stall-man did espy,
    Soon to the boy I heard him call,
    'You, Sir, you never buy a book,
    Therefore in one you shall not look.'
    The boy passed slowly on and with a sigh
    He wished he never had been taught to read,
    Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need.

    Of sufferings the poor have many,
    Which never can the rich annoy:
    I soon perceived another boy,
    Who looked as if he'd not had any
    Food, for that day at least--enjoy
    The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
    This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder,
    Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny,
    Beholding choice of dainty-dressèd meat:
    No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learned to eat.

                C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._


TETRACHORDON

    A book was writ of late called Tetrachordon;
      And woven close, both matter, form and style;
      The subject new: it walked the town awhile,
      Numbering good intellects; now seldom pored on.
    Cries the stall-reader, bless us! what a word on
      A title-page is this! and some in file
      Stand spelling false, while one might walk to Mile-
      End Green. Why is it harder, Sirs, than Gordon,
    Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp?
      Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek
      That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.
    Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheek,
      Hated not learning worse than toad or asp;
      When thou taught'st Cambridge, and King Edward Greek.

                                J. MILTON.


THE SECOND-HAND CATALOGUE

A Second-hand Bookseller's Catalogue is not a mere catalogue or list of
saleables, as the uninitiated may fancy. Even a common auctioneer's
catalogue of goods and chattels suggests a thousand reflections to a
peruser of any knowledge; judge then what the case must be with a
catalogue of Books; the very titles of which run the rounds of the whole
world, visible and invisible; geographies--biographies--
histories--loves--hates--joys--sorrows--cookeries--sciences--fashion--and
eternity! We speak on this subject from the most literal experience; for
often and often have we cut open a new catalogue of old books, with all
the fervour and ivory folder of a first love; often read one at tea;
nay, at dinner; and have put crosses against dozens of volumes in the
list, out of the pure imagination of buying them, the possibility being
_out of the question_!--

Nothing delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome, and read a
chapter gratuitously. Occasionally when we have opened some very
attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost
in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have
read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published
wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a
chair--'Take a chair, sir; you must be tired.'--J. H. LEIGH HUNT.
_Retrospective Review._


THE FIND

    Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss
    I' the air, and catch again, and twirl about
    By the crumpled vellum covers,--pure crude fact
    Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
    And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since?
    Examine it yourselves! I found this book,
    Gave a _lira_ for it, eightpence English just,
    (Mark the predestination!) when a Hand,
    Always above my shoulder, pushed me once,
    One day still fierce 'mid many a day struck calm,
    Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths,
    Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time;
    Toward Baccio's marble,--ay, the basement-ledge
    O' the pedestal where sits and menaces
    John of the Black Bands with the upright spear,
    'Twixt palace and church,--Riccardi where they lived,
    His race, and San Lorenzo where they lie.
    This book,--precisely on that palace-step
    Which, meant for lounging knaves o' the Medici,
    Now serves re-venders to display their ware,--
    'Mongst odds and ends of ravage, picture-frames
    White through the worn gilt, mirror-sconces chipped,
    Bronze angel-heads once knobs attached to chests,
    (Handled when ancient dames chose forth brocade)
    Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude,
    Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry
    Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts
    In baked earth, (broken, Providence be praised!)
    A wreck of tapestry, proudly-purposed web
    When reds and blues were indeed red and blue,
    Now offered as a mat to save bare feet
    (Since carpets constitute a cruel cost)
    Treading the chill scagliola bedward: then
    A pile of brown-etched prints, two _crazie_ each,
    Stopped by a conch a-top from fluttering forth
    --Sowing the Square with works of one and the same
    Master, the imaginative Sienese
    Great in the scenic backgrounds--(name and fame
    None of you know, nor does he fare the worse:)
    From these.... Oh, with a Lionard going cheap
    If it should prove, as promised, that Joconde
    Whereof a copy contents the Louvre!--these
    I picked this book from. Five compeers in flank
    Stood left and right of it as tempting more--
    A dogseared Spicilegium, the fond tale
    O' the Frail One of the Flower, by young Dumas,
    Vulgarized Horace for the use of schools,
    The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody,
    Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death, and Life,--
    With this, one glance at the lettered back of which,
    And 'Stall!' cried I: a _lira_ made it mine.

    Here it is, this I toss and take again;
    Small-quarto size, part print part manuscript:
    A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
    Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
    And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
    Give it me back! The thing's restorative
    I' the touch and sight.

                   R. BROWNING. _The Ring and the Book._


PURCHASING AN ACT OF PIETY

When Providence throws a good book in my way, I bow to its decree and
purchase it as an act of piety, if it is reasonably or unreasonably
cheap. I _adopt_ a certain number of books every year, out of a love for
the foundlings and stray children of other people's brains that nobody
seems to care for. Look here.

He took down a Greek Lexicon finely bound in calf, and spread it open.

Do you see that Hedericus? I had Greek dictionaries enough and to spare,
but I saw that noble quarto lying in the midst of an ignoble crowd of
cheap books, and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult to
scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the awful shade of
Aeschylus, I paid the mean price asked for it, and I wanted to double
it, but I suppose it would have been a foolish sacrifice of coin to
sentiment. I love that book for its looks and behaviour. None of your
'half-calf' economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open
anywhere! There isn't a book in my library that has such a generous way
of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured
rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting
of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his
place and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred repose. A
book may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanour, and this
book would be good company for personages like Roger Ascham and his
pupils the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey.--O. W. HOLMES. _The
Poet at the Breakfast-Table._


A FORCED SALE

    I fear that I must sell this residue
    Of my father's books; although the Elzevirs
    Have fly-leaves over-written by his hand,
    In faded notes as thick and fine and brown
    As cobwebs on a tawny monument
    Of the old Greeks--_conferenda haec cum his_--
    _Corruptè citat_--_lege potiùs_,
    And so on, in the scholar's regal way
    Of giving judgement on the parts of speech,
    As if he sate on all twelve thrones up-piled,
    Arraigning Israel. Ay, but books and notes
    Must go together. And this Proclus too,
    In quaintly dear contracted Grecian types,
    Fantastically crumpled, like his thoughts
    Which would not seem too plain; you go round twice
    For one step forward, then you take it back,
    Because you're somewhat giddy! there's the rule
    For Proclus. Ah, I stained this middle leaf
    With pressing in't my Florence iris-bell,
    Long stalk and all: my father chided me
    For that stain of blue blood,--I recollect
    The peevish turn his voice took,--'Silly girls,
    Who plant their flowers in our philosophy
    To make it fine, and only spoil the book!
    No more of it, Aurora.' Yes--no more!
    Ah, blame of love, that's sweeter than all praise
    Of those who love not! 'tis so lost to me,
    I cannot, in such beggared life, afford
    To lose my Proclus....

    The kissing Judas, Wolff, shall go instead,
    Who builds us such a royal book as this
    To honour a chief-poet, folio-built,
    And writes above, 'The house of Nobody':
    Who floats in cream, as rich as any sucked
    From Juno's breasts, the broad Homeric lines,
    And, while with their spondaic prodigious mouths
    They lap the lucent margins as babe-gods,
    Proclaims them bastards. Wolff's an atheist;
    And if the Iliad fell out, as he says,
    By mere fortuitous concourse of old songs,
    We'll guess as much, too, for the universe.

                    E. B. BROWNING. _Aurora Leigh._


THE VOCATION

One of the shop-windows he paused before was that of a second-hand
book-shop, where, on a narrow table outside, the literature of the ages
was represented in judicious mixture, from the immortal verse of Homer
to the mortal prose of the railway novel. That the mixture was judicious
was apparent from Deronda's finding in it something that he
wanted--namely, that wonderful bit of autobiography, the life of the
Polish Jew, Salomon Maimon; which, as he could easily slip it into his
pocket, he took from its place, and entered the shop to pay for,
expecting to see behind the counter a grimy personage showing that
nonchalance about sales which seems to belong universally to the
second-hand book-business. In most other trades you find generous men
who are anxious to sell you their wares for your own welfare; but even a
Jew will not urge Simson's Euclid on you with an affectionate assurance
that you will have pleasure in reading it, and that he wishes he had
twenty more of the article, so much is it in request. One is led to fear
that a second-hand bookseller may belong to that unhappy class of men
who have no belief in the good of what they get their living by, yet
keep conscience enough to be morose rather than unctuous in their
vocation.--G. ELIOT. _Daniel Deronda._


TO MY BOOKSELLER

    Thou that makst gain thy end, and, wisely well,
      Callst a book good, or bad, as it doth sell,
    Use mine so too: I give thee leave; but crave
      For the luck's sake it thus much favour have
    To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought;
      Not offered, as it made suit to be bought;
    Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls,
      Or in cleft sticks, advanced to make calls
    For termers, or some clerk-like servingman,
      Who scarce can spell the hard names: whose knight less can.
    If without these vile arts it will not sell,
      Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well.

                    BEN JONSON.


THE WRITER TO HIS BOOK

    Whither thus hastes my little book so fast?
    To Paul's Churchyard. What? in those cells to stand,
    With one leaf like a rider's cloak put up
    To catch a termer? or lie musty there
    With rhymes a term set out, or two, before?
    Some will redeem me. Few. Yes, read me too.
    Fewer. Nay, love me. Now thou dot'st, I see.
    Will not our English Athens art defend?
    Perhaps. Will lofty courtly wits not aim
    Still at perfection? If I grant? I fly.
    Whither? To Paul's. Alas, poor book, I rue
    Thy rash self-love; go, spread thy papery wings:
    Thy lightness cannot help or hurt my fame.

                           T. CAMPION.


AD BIBLIOPOLAM

    Printer or stationer or whate'er thou prove
    Shalt me record to Time's posterity:
    I'll not enjoin thee, but request in love,
    Thou so much deign my Book to dignify,
    As, first, it be not with your ballads mixed
    Next, not at play-houses 'mongst pippins sold:
    Then that on posts by the ears it stand not fixt,
    For every dull mechanic to behold.
    Last, that it come not brought in pedler's packs,
    To common fairs, of country, town, or city:
    Sold at a booth 'mongst pins and almanacks;
    Yet on thy hands to lie, thou'lt say 'twere pity;
      Let it be rather for tobacco rent,
      Or butchers-wives, next Cleansing-week in Lent.

             H. PARROT. _The Mastive, or Young-Whelpe
                                of the Olde-Dogge._


IN BONDAGE TO THE BOOKSELLER

Nevertheless conceive me not, I pray you, that I go about to lay a
general imputation upon all stationers. For to disparage the whole
profession were an act neither becoming an honest man to do, nor a
prudent auditory to suffer. Their mystery, as they not untruly term it,
consists of divers trades incorporated together: as printers,
book-binders, clasp-makers, booksellers, &c. And of all these be some
honest men, who to my knowledge are so grieved, being overborne by the
notorious oppressions and proceedings of the rest, that they have wished
themselves of some other calling. The printers' mystery is ingenious,
painful, and profitable: the book-binders' necessary; the clasp-makers'
useful. And indeed, the retailer of books, commonly called a bookseller,
is a trade, which, being well governed and limited within certain
bounds, might become somewhat serviceable to the rest. But as it is now,
for the most part abused, the bookseller hath not only made the printer,
the binder, and the clasp-maker a slave to him: but hath brought
authors, yea, the whole Commonwealth, and all the liberal sciences into
bondage. For he makes all professors of Art labour for his profit, at
his own price, and utters it to the Commonwealth in such fashion, and at
those rates, which please himself. Insomuch, that I wonder so
insupportable and so impertinent a thing as a mere bookseller,
considering what the profession is become now, was ever permitted to
grow up in the Commonwealth.--G. WITHER. _The Schollers Purgatory._


IN PATERNOSTER ROW

    Methinks, oh vain, ill-judging book!
    I see thee cast a wistful look,
    Where reputations won and lost are
    In famous row called _Paternoster_.
    Incensed to find your precious olio
    Buried in unexplored port-folio,
    You scorn the prudent lock and key;
    And pant, well-bound and gilt, to see
    Your volume in the window set
    Of Stockdale, Hookham, and Debrett.
    Go then, and pass that dangerous bourne
    Whence never book can back return;
    And when you find--condemned, despised,
    Neglected, blamed, and criticized--
    Abuse from all who read you fall
    (If haply you be read at all),
    Sorely will you for folly sigh at,
    And wish for me, and home, and quiet.

    Assuming now a conjurer's office, I
    Thus on your future fortune prophesy:--
    Soon as your novelty is o'er,
    And you are young and new no more,
    In some dark dirty corner thrown,
    Mouldy with damps, with cobwebs strown,
    Your leaves shall be the bookworm's prey;
    Or sent to chandler's shop away,
    And doomed to suffer public scandal,
    Shall line the trunk, or wrap the candle.

                  M. G. LEWIS. _The Monk._


THE ELEPHANT AND THE BOOKSELLER

      The Bookseller, who heard him speak,
    And saw him turn a page of Greek,
    Thought, what a genius have I found!
    Then thus addressed with bow profound:
      'Learned Sir, if you'd employ your pen
    Against the senseless sons of men,
    Or write the history of Siam,
    No man is better pay than I am.
    Or, since you're learned in Greek, let's see
    Something against the Trinity.'
      When, wrinkling with a sneer his trunk,
    'Friend', quoth the Elephant, 'you're drunk:
    E'en keep your money, and be wise;
    Leave man on man to criticize:
    For that you ne'er can want a pen
    Among the senseless sons of men.
    They unprovoked will court the fray;
    Envy's a sharper spur than pay.
    No author ever spared a brother;
    Wits are gamecocks to one another.'

                      J. GAY. _Fables._


LITERARY UPHOLSTERERS

Our booksellers here at London disgrace literature by the trash they
bespeak to be written, and at the same time prevent everything else from
being sold. They are little more or less than upholsterers, who sell
_sets_ or _bodies_ of arts and sciences for furniture; and the
purchasers, for I am very sure they are not readers, buy only in that
view. I never thought there was much merit in reading: but yet it is too
good a thing to be put upon no better footing than damask and
mahogany.--H. WALPOLE. EARL OF ORFORD (Letter to Sir David Dalrymple).


No furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a
single word.--S. SMITH. _Memoirs._


ON A MISCELLANY OF POEMS

To BERNARD LINTOTT

_'Ipsa varietate tentamus efficere ut alia aliis, quaedam fortasse
omnibus placeant.'_ _Plin. Epist._

      As when some skilful cook, to please each guest,
    Would in one mixture comprehend a feast,
    With due proportion and judicious care
    He fills his dish with different sorts of fare,
    Fishes and fowls deliciously unite,
    To feast at once the taste, the smell, and sight.
      So, Bernard, must a Miscellany be
    Compounded of all kinds of poetry;
    The Muses' olio, which all tastes may fit,
    And treat each reader with his darling wit.
      Wouldst thou for Miscellanies raise thy fame,
    And bravely rival Jacob's mighty name,
    Let all the Muses in the piece conspire;
    The lyric bard must strike the harmonious lyre;
    Heroic strains must here and there be found;
    And nervous sense be sung in lofty sound;
    Let elegy in moving numbers flow,
    And fill some pages with melodious woe;
    Let not your amorous songs too numerous prove,
    Nor glut thy reader with abundant love;
    Satire must interfere, whose pointed rage
    May lash the madness of a vicious age;
    Satire! the Muse that never fails to hit,
    For if there's scandal, to be sure there's wit.
    Tire not our patience with Pindaric lays,
    Those swell the piece, but very rarely please;
    Let short-breathed epigram its force confine,
    And strike at follies in a single line.
    Translations should throughout the work be sown,
    And Homer's godlike Muse be made our own;
    Horace in useful numbers should be sung,
    And Virgil's thoughts adorn the British tongue.
    Let Ovid tell Corinna's hard disdain,
    And at her door in melting notes complain;
    His tender accents pitying virgins move,
    And charm the listening ear with tales of love
    Let every classic in the volume shine,
    And each contribute to thy great design;
    Through various subjects let the reader range,
    And raise his fancy with a grateful change.
    Variety's the source of joy below,
    From whence still fresh revolving pleasures flow.
    In books and love, the mind one end pursues,
    And only _change_ the expiring flame renews.
      Where Buckingham will condescend to give,
    That honoured piece to distant times must live;
    When noble Sheffield strikes the trembling strings,
    The little Loves rejoice, and clap their wings;
    Anacreon lives, they cry, the harmonious swain
    Retunes the lyre, and tries his wonted strain,
    'Tis he--our lost Anacreon lives again.
    But, when the illustrious poet soars above
    The sportive revels of the God of Love,
    Like Mars's Muse, he takes a loftier flight,
    And towers beyond the wondering Cupid's sight.
      If thou wouldst have thy volume stand the test,
    And of all others be reputed best,
    Let Congreve teach the listening groves to mourn,
    As when he wept o'er fair Pastora's urn.
      Let Prior's Muse with softening accents move,
    Soft as the strains of constant Emma's love:
    Or let his fancy choose some jovial theme,
    As when he told Hans Carvel's jealous dream;
    Prior the admiring reader entertains
    With Chaucer's humour, and with Spenser's strains.
      Waller in Granville lives; when Mira sings,
    With Waller's hand he strikes the sounding strings,
    With sprightly turns his noble genius shines,
    And manly sense adorns his easy lines.
      On Addison's sweet lays attention waits,
    And silence guards the place while he repeats;
    His Muse alike on every subject charms,
    Whether she paints the god of love, or arms:
    In him pathetic Ovid sings again,
    And Homer's _Iliad_ shines in his _Campaign_.
      Whenever Garth shall raise his sprightly song,
    Sense flows in easy numbers from his tongue;
    Great Phoebus in his learned son we see,
    Alike in physic, as in poetry.
      When Pope's harmonious Muse with pleasure roves
    Amidst the plains, the murmuring streams, and groves,
    Attentive Echo, pleased to hear his songs,
    Through the glad shade each warbling note prolongs;
    His various numbers charm our ravished ears,
    His steady judgement far out-shoots his years,
    And early in the youth the god appears.
      From these successful bards collect thy strains;
    And praise with profit shall reward thy pains:
    Then, while calf's-leather-binding bears the sway,
    And sheepskin to its sleeker gloss gives way;
    While neat old Elzevir is reckoned better
    Than Pirate Hill's brown sheets and scurvy letter;
    While print-admirers careful Aldous choose,
    Before John Morphew, or the Weekly News;
    So long shall live thy praise in books of fame,
    And Tonson yield to Lintott's lofty name.

                        J. GAY.


VERSES TO BE PREFIXED BEFORE BERNARD LINTOTT'S NEW MISCELLANY

    Some Colinaeus praise, some Bleau,
    Others account them but so so;
    Some Plantin to the rest prefer,
    And some esteem old Elzevir;
    Others with Aldous would besot us;
    I, for my part, admire Lintotus.--
    His character's beyond compare,
    Like his own person, large and fair.
    They print their names in letters small,
    But LINTOTT stands in capital:
    Author and he with equal grace
    Appear, and stare you in the face.
    Stephens prints Heathen Greek, 'tis said,
    Which some can't construe, some can't read;
    But all that comes from Lintott's hand,
    Even Rawlinson might understand.
    Oft in an Aldous, or a Plantin,
    A page is blotted, or leaf wanting:
    Of Lintott's books this can't be said,
    All fair, and not so much as read.
    Their copy cost 'em not a penny
    To Homer, Virgil, or to any;
    They ne'er gave sixpence for two lines
    To them, their heirs, or their assigns:
    But Lintott is at vast expense,
    And pays prodigious dear for--sense.
    Their books are useful but to few,
    A scholar or a wit or two;
    Lintott's for general use are fit.

                        A. POPE.


TO MR. MURRAY

    Strahan, Tonson, Lintott of the times,
    Patron and publisher of rhymes,
    For thee the bard up Pindus climbs,
                              My Murray.

    To thee, with hope and terror dumb,
    The unpledged MS. authors come;
    Thou printest all--and sellest some--
                              My Murray.

    Upon thy table's baize so green
    The last new _Quarterly_ is seen,--
    But where is thy new Magazine,
                              My Murray?

    Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine
    The works thou deemest most divine--
    The 'Art of Cookery', and mine,
                              My Murray.

    Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist,
    And Sermons, to thy mill bring grist;
    And then thou hast the 'Navy List',
                              My Murray.

    And heaven forbid I should conclude
    Without 'the Board of Longitude',
    Although this narrow paper would,
                              My Murray.

                     G. GORDON, LORD BYRON.


TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE EVERY-DAY BOOK'

    I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!
      In whose capacious all-embracing leaves
    The very marrow of tradition's shown;
      And all that history--much that fiction--weaves.

    By every sort of taste your work is graced.
      Vast stores of modern anecdote we find,
    With good old story quaintly interlaced--
      The theme as various as the reader's mind.

    Rome's life-fraught legends you so truly paint--
      Yet kindly,--that the half-turned Catholic
    Scarcely forbears to smile at his own Saint,
      And cannot curse the candid heretic.

    Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page;
      Our father's mummeries we well-pleased behold,
    And, proudly conscious of a purer age,
      Forgive some fopperies in the times of old.

    Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright _Days_,
      Must needs bestow on you both good and many,
    Who, building trophies of his Children's praise,
      Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any.

    Dan Phoebus loves your book--trust me, friend Hone--
      The title only errs, he bids me say:
    For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown,
      He swears, 'tis not a work of _every day_.

                               C. LAMB.


I love everything that is old: old friends, old times, old manners, old
books, old wines.--O. GOLDSMITH.


THE BANNATYNE CLUB, OR ONE VOLUME MORE

    Assist me, ye friends of Old Books and Old Wine,
    To sing in the praises of sage Bannatyne,
    Who left such a treasure of old Scottish lore
    As enables each age to print one volume more.
      One volume more, my friends, one volume more,
      We'll ransack old Banny for one volume more.

    And first, Allan Ramsay was eager to glean
    From Bannatyne's _Hortus_ his bright Evergreen;
    Two light little volumes (intended for four)
    Still leave us the task to print one volume more.
                    One volume more, &c.

    His ways were not ours, for he cared not a pin
    How much he left out, or how much he put in;
    The truth of the reading he thought was a bore,
    So this accurate age calls for one volume more.
                    One volume more, &c.

    Correct and sagacious, then came my Lord Hailes,
    And weighed every letter in critical scales,
    And left out some brief words, which the prudish abhor,
    And castrated Banny in one volume more.
      One volume more, my friends, one volume more;
      We'll restore Banny's manhood in one volume more.

    John Pinkerton next, and I'm truly concerned
    I can't call that worthy so candid as learned;
    He railed at the plaid and blasphemed the claymore,
    And set Scots by the ears in his one volume more.
      One volume more, my friends, one volume more,
      Celt and Goth shall be pleased with one volume more.

    As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor,
    And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar,
    His diet too acid, his temper too sour,
    Little Ritson came out with his two volumes more.
      But one volume, my friends, one volume more,
      We'll dine on roast-beef and print one volume more.

    The stout Gothic yeditur, next on the roll,
    With his beard like a brush, and as black as a coal;
    And honest Greysteel that was true to the core,
    Lent their hearts and their hands each to one volume more.
                    One volume more, &c.

    Since by these single champions what wonders were done,
    What may not be achieved by our Thirty and One?
    Law, Gospel, and Commerce we count in our corps,
    And the Trade and the Press join for one volume more.
                    One volume more, &c.

    Ancient libels and contraband books, I assure ye,
    We'll print as secure from Exchequer or Jury;
    Then hear your Committee and let them count o'er
    The Chiels they intend in their three volumes more.
                    Three volumes more, &c.

    They'll produce your King Jamie, the Sapient and Sext,
    And the Bob of Dumblane and her Bishops come next;
    One tome miscellaneous they'll add to your store,
    Resolving next year to print four volumes more.
      Four volumes more, my friends, four volumes more;
      Pay down your subscriptions for four volumes more.

                               SIR W. SCOTT.


THE BOOKSELLERS' BANQUET

    Grave vendors of volumes, best friends of the Nine,
      Give ear to my song as to charm you I try;
    Other bards may in vain look for audience like mine,
      For the muses they chant, for the booksellers I.
    Their notes I have drawn, so 'tis nothing but fair
      That my notes should be drawn, if they please, at a beck;
    Undaunted I warble--I truly declare
      My song is most valued when met by a _cheque_.

    The work we've just finished went off very well;
      It was set out with _plates_, such as Finden, or Heath,
    If even their professional feelings rebel,
      Must praise on account (not in spite) of their teeth.
    Though by Fraser cut up, and by Murray reviewed,
      Lovegrove's articles all fit insertion have found.
    We have cleared off our boards, but as business is good,
      We keep wetted for use, and for pleasure unbound.

    But here not for pleasure alone are we stored
      Like holiday tomes in our gilding so bright;
    Some care 'tis our duty and wish to afford
      In the moment of need to a less lucky wight,
    Whose title is lost, and whose covers are torn,
      When the moth has gnawed through, dust or cobwebs surround,
    And to lift on the shelf our poor brother forlorn,
      As a much damaged old folio treasured by Lowndes.

    Though his back stock of life may perchance weigh him down,
      By our aid may the old heavy pressure be moved,
    And new-titled we start him again on the town,
      As a second edition revised and improved.
    And for dealings like this a commission will find,
      And that of a date that the primest is given,
    The commission is--Strive to do good to mankind,
      And the place of its dates is no other than Heaven.

    I won't keep the press waiting--my copy is gone,
      Having finished a lay which Bob Fisher, perhaps,
    May out of the head of old Caxton call one,
      If not of his _Drawing_, yet _Dining-room Scraps_;
    But as we all still think of Tom Talfourd's bill,
      After sixty years' date, I respectfully beg,
    As a knight of the quill, here to offer for _nil_,
      My right in this song as a present to Tegg.

                                    W. MAGINN.


WHAT A HEART-BREAKING SHOP

But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to
the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came
issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had
at school, long time ago, with 'Master Pinch, Grove House Academy',
inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia
leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes, neatly ranged
within: what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the
spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and
sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open:
tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the
impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too
were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like handposts
on the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of incident beyond;
and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name,
whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any
form, upon the narrow shelf beside his bed at Mr. Pecksniff's. What a
heart-breaking shop it was!--C. DICKENS. _Martin Chuzzlewit._


GENTEEL ORNAMENTS

If people bought no more books than they intended to read, and no more
swords than they intended to use, the two worst trades in Europe would
be a bookseller's and a sword-cutler's; but luckily for both they are
reckoned genteel ornaments.--LORD CHESTERFIELD.


MAMMON AND BOOKS

All who are affected by the love of books hold worldly affairs and money
very cheap, as Jerome writes to Vigilantius (Epist. 54): 'It is not for
the same man to ascertain the value of gold coins and of writings;'
which somebody thus repeated in verse:

    No tinker's hand shall dare a book to stain;
      No miser's heart can wish a book to gain;
    The gold assayer cannot value books;
      On them the epicure disdainful looks.
    One house at once, believe me, cannot hold
      Lovers of books and hoarders up of gold.

No man, therefore, can serve mammon and books.--R. DE BURY.
_Philobiblon._


THE POOR STUDENT

In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor
student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which
insult not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances. He
was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his
domains.--C. LAMB. _Poor Relations._


NATIONAL EXPENDITURE ON BOOKS

I say first we have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care
about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries,
public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a
man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad--a bibliomaniac.
But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves
every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining
themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think
the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and
private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars?
What position would its expenditure on literature take, as compared with
its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of
food for the body: now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it
is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most
people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a
large turbot for it! Though there have been men who have pinched their
stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were
cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's dinners are. We
are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a
precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work
or economy; and if public libraries were half as costly as public
dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish
men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well
as in munching and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature
is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it
is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth _much_;
nor is it serviceable until it has been read, and re-read, and loved,
and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you
want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armoury, or
a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is
good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good
book; and the family must be poor indeed which, once in their lives,
cannot, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We
call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to
thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries!--J. RUSKIN.
_Sesame and Lilies._


THE VALUE OF BOOK BORROWING

I have sent you the Philosophy--books you writ to me for; anything that
you want of this kind for the advancement of your studies, do but write,
and I shall furnish you. When I was a student as you are, my practice
was to borrow rather than buy, some sort of books, and to be always
punctual in restoring them upon the day assigned, and in the interim to
swallow of them as much as made for my turn. This obliged me to read
them through with more haste to keep my word, whereas I had not been so
careful to peruse them had they been my own books, which I knew were
always ready at my dispose.--J. HOWELL. _Familiar Letters._


ACCIDENTS TO BOOKS

Fortunate are those who only consider a book for the utility and
pleasure they may derive from its possession. Those students who, though
they know much, still thirst to know more, may require this vast sea of
books; yet in that sea they may suffer many shipwrecks.

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the
damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the
_borrowers_, not to say a word of the _purloiners_!--I. D'ISRAELI.
_Curiosities of Literature._


BORROWERS OF BOOKS

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers
than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more
formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your _borrowers
of books_--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of
shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch [Coleridge],
matchless in his depredations!

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth
knocked out--(you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury,
reader!)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing), once
held the tallest of my folios, _Opera Bonaventurae_, choice and massy
divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a
lesser calibre,--Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as
dwarfs,--itself an Ascapart!--_that_ Comberbatch abstracted upon the
faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to
suffer by than to refute, namely, that 'the title to property in a book
(my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's
powers of understanding and appreciating the same'. Should he go on
acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case--two shelves from the
ceiling--scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser--was
whilom the commodious resting-place of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will
hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who
introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to
discover its beauties--but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his
mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than
himself.--Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where
Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's
refuse sons, when the Fates _borrowed_ Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of
Melancholy, in sober state.--There loitered the Complete Angler; quiet
as in life, by some stream side.--In yonder nook, John Buncle, a
widower-volume, with 'eyes closed', mourns his ravished mate.

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea,
sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich
an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-collection of this
nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has
forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as
mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of
the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in
conjunction; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little
disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am.--I charge no
warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the
ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are
sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no
account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful
K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and
adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the
thrice noble Margaret Newcastle?--knowing at the time, and knowing that
I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the
illustrious folio:--what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and
childish love of getting the better of thy friend?--Then, worst cut of
all! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land--

    Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
    A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
    Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!

--hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about
thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy
quips and mirthful tales?--Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done
of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part
Englishwoman!--that _she_ could fix upon no other treatise to bear away
in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville,
Lord Brooke--of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or
England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! _Was
there not Zimmerman on Solitude?_

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of
showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books;
but let it be to such a one as S. T. C.--he will return them (generally
anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations,
tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious
MSS. of his--(in _matter_ oftentimes, and almost in _quantity_ not
unfrequently, vying with the originals)--in no very clerky hand--legible
in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser
cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands.--I
counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C.--C.
LAMB. _The Two Races of Men._


BORROWING AND LENDING

I own I borrow books with as much facility as I lend. I cannot see a
work that interests me on another person's shelf, without a wish to
carry it off: but, I repeat, that I have been much more sinned against
than sinning in the article of non-return; and am scrupulous in the
article of intention.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My Books._


WEDDED TO BOOKS

If people are to be wedded to their books, it is hard that, under our
present moral dispensations, they are not to be allowed the usual
exclusive privileges of marriage. A friend thinks no more of borrowing a
book nowadays, than a Roman did of borrowing a man's wife; and what is
worse, we are so far gone in our immoral notions on this subject, that
we even lend it as easily as Cato did his spouse. Now what a happy thing
ought it not to be to have exclusive possession of a book,--one's
Shakespeare for instance; for the finer the wedded work, the more
anxious of course we should be, that it should give nobody happiness but
ourselves. Think of the pleasure of not only being with it in general,
of having by far the greater part of its company, but of having it
entirely to oneself; of always saying internally, 'It is my property';
of seeing it well-dressed in 'black or red', purely to please one's own
eyes; of wondering how any fellow could be so impudent as to propose
borrowing it for an evening; of being at once proud of his admiration,
and pretty certain that it was in vain; of the excitement nevertheless
of being a little uneasy whenever we saw him approach it too nearly; of
wishing that it could give him a cuff of the cheek with one of its
beautiful boards, for presuming to like its beauties as well as
ourselves; of liking other people's books, but not at all thinking it
proper that they should like ours; of getting perhaps indifferent to it,
and then comforting ourselves with the reflection that others are not
so, though to no purpose; in short, of all the mixed transport and
anxiety to which the exclusiveness of the book-wedded state would be
liable; not to mention the impossibility of other people's having any
literary offspring from our fair unique, and consequently of the danger
of loving any compilations but our own. Really, if we could burn all
other copies of our originals, as the Roman Emperor once thought of
destroying Homer, this system would be worth thinking of. If we had a
good library, we should be in the situation of the Turks with their
seraglios, which are a great improvement upon our petty exclusivenesses.
Nobody could then touch our Shakespeare, our Spenser, our Chaucer, our
Greek and Italian writers. People might say, 'Those are the walls of the
library!' and 'sigh, and look, and sigh again'; but they should never
get in. No Retrospective rake should anticipate our privileges of
quotation. Our Mary Wollstonecrafts and our Madame de Staëls--no one
should know how finely they were lettered,--what soul there was in their
disquisitions. We once had a glimpse of the feelings which people would
have on these occasions. It was in the library of Trinity College,
Cambridge. The keeper of it was from home; and not being able to get a
sight of the manuscript of Milton's _Comus_, we were obliged to content
ourselves with looking through a wire-work, a kind of safe, towards the
shelf on which it reposed. How we winked, and yearned, and imagined we
saw a corner of the all-precious sheets, to no purpose! The feelings
were not very pleasant, it is true; but then as long as they were
confined to others, they would of course only add to our
satisfaction.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _Wedded to Books._


THE ART OF BOOK-KEEPING

    How hard, when those who do not wish
      To lend, that's lose, their books,
    Are snared by anglers--folks that fish
      With literary hooks;

    Who call and take some favourite tome,
      But never read it through;--
    They thus complete their set at home,
      By making one at you.

    Behold the bookshelf of a dunce
      Who borrows--never lends:
    Yon work, in twenty volumes, once
      Belonged to twenty friends.

    New tales and novels you may shut
      From view--'tis all in vain;
    They're gone--and though the leaves are 'cut'
      They never 'come again'.

    For pamphlets lent I look around,
      For tracts my tears are spilt;
    But when they take a book that's bound,
      'Tis surely extra-guilt.

    A circulating library
      Is mine--my birds are flown;
    There's one odd volume left to be
      Like all the rest, a-lone.

    I, of my Spenser quite bereft,
      Last winter sore was shaken;
    Of Lamb I've but a quarter left,
      Nor could I save my Bacon.

    My Hall and Hill were levelled flat,
      But Moore was still the cry;
    And then, although I threw them Sprat,
      They swallowed up my Pye.

    O'er everything, however slight,
      They seized some airy trammel;
    They snatched my Hogg and Fox one night,
      And pocketed my Campbell.

    And then I saw my Crabbe at last,
      Like Hamlet's, backward go;
    And as my tide was ebbing fast,
      Of course I lost my Rowe.

    I wondered into what balloon
      My books their course had bent;
    And yet, with all my marvelling, soon
      I found my Marvell went.

    My Mallet served to knock me down,
      Which makes me thus a talker;
    And once, while I was out of town,
      My Johnson proved a Walker.

    While studying o'er the fire one day
      My Hobbes amidst the smoke,
    They bore my Colman clean away,
      And carried off my Coke.

    They picked my Locke, to me far more
      Than Bramah's patent's worth;
    And now my losses I deplore
      Without a Home on earth.

    If once a book you let them lift,
      Another they conceal;
    For though I caught them stealing Swift,
      As swiftly went my Steele.

    Hope is not now upon my shelf,
      Where late he stood elated;
    But, what is strange, my Pope himself
      Is excommunicated.

    My little Suckling in the grave
      Is sunk, to swell the ravage;
    And what 'twas Crusoe's fate to save
      'Twas mine to lose--a Savage.

    Even Glover's works I cannot put
      My frozen hands upon;
    Though ever since I lost my Foote
      My Bunyan has been gone.

    My Hoyle with Cotton went; oppressed,
      My Taylor too must sail;
    To save my Goldsmith from arrest,
      In vain I offered Bayle.

    I Prior sought, but could not see
      The Hood so late in front;
    And when I turned to hunt for Lee,
      Oh! where was my Leigh Hunt?

    I tried to laugh, old care to tickle,
      Yet could not Tickell touch,
    And then, alas! I missed my Mickle,
      And surely mickle's much.

    'Tis quite enough my griefs to feed,
      My sorrows to excuse,
    To think I cannot read my Reid,
      Nor even use my Hughes.

    To West, to South, I turn my head,
      Exposed alike to odd jeers;
    For since my Roger Ascham's fled,
      I ask 'em for my Rogers.

    They took my Horne--and Horne Tooke, too,
      And thus my treasures flit;
    I feel when I would Hazlitt view,
      The flames that it has lit.

    My word's worth little, Wordsworth gone,
      If I survive its doom;
    How many a bard I doated on
      Was swept off--with my Broome.

    My classics would not quiet lie,
      A thing so fondly hoped;
    Like Dr. Primrose, I may cry,
      'My Livy has eloped!'

    My life is wasting fast away--
      I suffer from these shocks;
    And though I've fixed a lock on Gray,
      There's grey upon my locks.

    I'm far from young--am growing pale--
      I see my Butter fly;
    And when they ask about my _ail_,
      'Tis Burton! I reply.

    They still, have made me slight returns,
      And thus my griefs divide;
    For oh! they've cured me of my Burns,
      And eased my Akenside.

    But all I think I shall not say,
      Nor let my anger burn;
    For as they never found me Gay,
      They have not left me Sterne.

                   S. LAMAN BLANCHARD.


THE BOOK OF NATURE

    Of this fair volume which we World do name,
    If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care,
    Of Him who it corrects, and did it frame,
    We clear might read the art and wisdom rare:
    Find out His power which wildest powers doth tame,
    His providence extending everywhere,
    His justice which proud rebels doth not spare,
    In every page, no, period of the same.
    But silly we, like foolish children, rest
    Well pleased with coloured vellum, leaves of gold,
    Fair dangling ribands, leaving what is best,
    On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold;
    Or if by chance our minds do muse on aught,
    It is some picture on the margin wrought.

                         W. DRUMMOND.


    In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
    A little I can read.

               W. SHAKESPEARE. _Antony and Cleopatra._


THE BOOK

    Eternal God! Maker of all
    That have lived here since the Man's fall!
    The Rock of Ages! in whose shade
    They live unseen when here they fade!

    Thou knew'st this _paper_ when it was
    Mere seed, and after that but grass;
    Before 'twas dressed or spun, and when
    Made linen, who did _wear_ it then,
    What were their lives, their thoughts and deeds,
    Whether good _corn_, or fruitless _weeds_.

    Thou knew'st this _tree_, when a green shade
    Covered it, since a _cover_ made,
    And where it flourished, grew, and spread,
    As if it never should be dead.

    Thou knew'st this harmless _beast_, when he
    Did live and feed by thy decree
    On each green thing; then slept, well fed,
    Clothed with this _skin_, which now lies spread
    A _covering_ o'er this aged book,
    Which makes me wisely weep, and look
    On my own dust; mere dust it is,
    But not so dry and clean as this.
    Thou knew'st and saw'st them all, and though
    Now scattered thus, dost know them so.

    O knowing, glorious Spirit! when
    Thou shalt restore trees, beasts and men,
    When thou shalt make all new again,
    Destroying only death and pain,
    Give him amongst thy works a place
    Who in them loved and sought thy face!

                           H. VAUGHAN.


THE BOOK OF LIFE

    That Life is a Comedy oft hath been shown,
    By all who Mortality's changes have known;
    But more like a Volume its actions appear,
    Where each Day is a Page and each Chapter a year.

    'Tis a Manuscript Time shall full surely unfold,
    Though with Black-Letter shaded, or shining with gold;
    The Initial, like youth, glitters bright on its Page,
    But its text is as dark--as the gloom of old Age.
      Then Life's Counsels of Wisdom engrave on thy breast,
      And deep on thine Heart be her lessons impressed.

    Though the Title stands first it can little declare
    The Contents which the Pages ensuing shall bear;
    As little the first day of Life can explain
    The succeeding events which shall glide in its train.
    The Book follows next, and, delighted, we trace
    An Elzevir's beauty, a Gutenberg's grace;
    Thus on pleasure we gaze with as raptured an eye,
    Till, cut off like a Volume imperfect, we die!
      Then Life's Counsels of Wisdom engrave on thy breast,
      And deep on thine Heart be her lessons impressed.

    Yet e'en thus imperfect, complete, or defaced,
    The skill of the Printer is still to be traced;
    And though death bend us early in life to his will,
    The wise hand of our Author is visible still.
    Like the Colophon lines is the Epitaph's lay,
    Which tells of what age and what nation our day,
    And, like the Device of the Printer, we bear
    The form of the Founder, whose Image we wear.
      Then Life's Counsels of Wisdom engrave on thy breast,
      And deep on thine Heart be her lessons impressed.

    The work thus completed its Boards shall enclose,
    Till a Binding more bright and more beauteous it shows;
    And who can deny, when Life's Vision hath passed,
    That the dark Boards of Death shall surround us at last.
    Yet our Volume illumed with fresh splendours shall rise,
    To be gazed at by Angels, and read to the skies,
    Reviewed by its Author, revised by his Pen,
    In a fair new Edition to flourish again.
      Then Life's Counsels of Wisdom engrave on thy breast,
      And deep on thine Heart be her lessons impressed.

                             R. THOMSON.


THE WIND OVER THE CHIMNEY

    See, the fire is sinking low,
    Dusky red the embers glow,
      While above them still I cower,
    While a moment more I linger,
    Though the clock, with lifted finger,
      Points beyond the midnight hour.

    Sings the blackened log a tune
    Learned in some forgotten June
      From a school-boy at his play,
    When they both were young together,
    Heart of youth and summer weather
      Making all their holiday.

    And the night-wind rising, hark!
    How above there in the dark,
      In the midnight and the snow,
    Ever wilder, fiercer, grander.
    Like the trumpets of Iskander,
      All the noisy chimneys blow!

    Every quivering tongue of flame
    Seems to murmur some great name,
      Seems to say to me, 'Aspire!'
    But the night-wind answers, 'Hollow
    Are the visions that you follow,
      Into darkness sinks your fire!'

    Then the flicker of the blaze
    Gleams on volumes of old days,
      Written by masters of the art,
    Loud through whose majestic pages
    Rolls the melody of ages,
      Throb the harp-strings of the heart.

    And again the tongues of flame
    Start exulting and exclaim:
      'These are prophets, bards, and seers;
    In the horoscope of nations,
    Like ascendant constellations,
      They control the coming years.'

    But the night-wind cries: 'Despair!
    Those who walk with feet of air
      Leave no long-enduring marks;
    At God's forges incandescent
    Mighty hammers beat incessant,
      These are but the flying sparks.

    'Dust are all the hands that wrought;
    Books are sepulchres of thought;
      The dead laurels of the dead
    Rustle for a moment only,
    Like the withered leaves in lonely
      Churchyards at some passing tread.'

    Suddenly the flame sinks down;
    Sink the rumours of renown;
      And alone the night-wind drear
    Clamours louder, wilder, vaguer,--
    ''Tis the brand of Meleager
      Dying on the hearth-stone here!'

    And I answer,--'Though it be,
    Why should that discomfort me?
      No endeavour is in vain;
    Its reward is in the doing,
    And the rapture of pursuing
      Is the prize the vanquished gain.'

                     H. W. LONGFELLOW. _Wise Books._


For half the truths they hold are honoured tombs.--G. ELIOT. _The
Spanish Gipsy._


A GREAT NECROMANCER

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say of himself that he was a great
Necromancer, for that he used to ask counsel of the dead: meaning
Books.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Apophthegmes._


BOOKS FOR MAGIC

    Resolve you, doctors, _Bacon_ can by books
    Make storming _Boreas_ thunder from his cave,
    And dim fair _Luna_ to a dark Eclipse.
    The great arch-ruler, potentate of hell,
    Trembles, when _Bacon_ bids him, or his fiends,
    Bow to the force of his Pentageron.
    What art can work, the frolic friar knows,
    And therefore will I turn my Magic books,
    And strain out Necromancy to the deep.
    I have contrived and framed a head of brass
    (I made _Belcephon_ hammer out the stuff),
    And that by art shall read Philosophy:
    And I will strengthen _England_ by my skill,
    That if ten _Caesars_ lived and reigned in _Rome_,
    With all the legions _Europe_ doth contain,
    They should not touch a grasse of English ground:
    The work that _Ninus_ reared at _Babylon_,
    The brazen walls framed by _Semiramis_,
    Carved out like to the portal of the sun,
    Shall not be such as rings the _English_ strand
    From _Dover_ to the market place of _Rye_.

                  R. GREENE. _The Honourable History of
                            Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay._


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH

                                'Tis a custom with him
    I' the afternoon to sleep: there thou may'st brain him,
    Having first seized his books; or with a log
    Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,
    Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember
    First to possess his books; for without them
    He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
    One spirit to command: they all do hate him
    As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.

                    W. SHAKESPEARE. _The Tempest._


RED LETTERS AND CONJURING

SMITH. The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read and cast accompt.

CADE. O monstrous!

SMITH. We took him setting of boys' copies.

CADE. Here's a villain!

SMITH. Has a book in his pocket with red letters in't.

CADE. Nay, then, he is a conjurer.

    W. SHAKESPEARE. _Second Part of King Henry the Sixth._


MERLIN'S BOOK

    _You_ read the book, my pretty Vivien!
    O aye, it is but twenty pages long,
    But every page having an ample marge,
    And every marge enclosing in the midst
    A square of text that looks a little blot,
    The text no larger than the limbs of fleas;
    And every square of text an awful charm,
    Writ in a language that has long gone by.
    So long, that mountains have arisen since
    With cities on their flanks--_you_ read the book!
    And every margin scribbled, crost, and crammed
    With comment, densest condensation, hard
    To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights
    Of my long life have made it easy to me.
    And none can read the text, not even I;
    And none can read the comment but myself;
    And in the comment did I find the charm.

             LORD TENNYSON. _Idylls of the King: Vivien._


FAST AND LOOSE

    Fast bind, fast find: my Bible was well bound;
    A Thief came fast, and loose my Bible found:
    Was't bound and loose at once? how can that be?
    'Twas loose for him, although 'twas bound for me.

                        J. TAYLOR.


READ THE SCRIPTURES

Read the Scriptures, which Hyperius holds available of itself; 'the mind
is erected thereby from all worldly cares, and hath much quiet and
tranquillity.' For, as Austin well hath it, 'tis _scientia scientiarum,
omni melle dulcior, omni pane suavior, omni vino hilarior_: 'tis the
best nepenthe, surest cordial, sweetest alterative, presentest diverter:
for neither as Chrysostom well adds, 'those boughs and leaves of trees
which are plashed for cattle to stand under, in the heat of the day, in
summer, so much refresh them with their acceptable shade, as the reading
of the Scripture doth recreate and comfort a distressed soul, in sorrow
and affliction.' Paul bids us 'pray continually'; _quod cibus corpori,
lectio animae facit_, saith Seneca, 'as meat is to the body, such is
reading to the soul.' 'To be at leisure without books is another hell,
and to be buried alive.' Cardan calls a library the physic of the soul;
'Divine authors fortify the mind, make men bold and constant'; and (as
Hyperius adds) 'godly conference will not permit the mind to be tortured
with absurd cogitations.'--R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._


TO THE HOLY BIBLE

    O Book! Life's guide! how shall we part,
    And thou so long seized of my heart?
    Take this last kiss; and let me weep
    True thanks to thee before I sleep.

    Thou wert the first put in my hand
    When yet I could not understand,
    And daily didst my young eyes lead
    To letters, till I learnt to read.

    But as rash youths, when once grown strong,
    Fly from their nurses to the throng,
    Where they new consorts choose, and stick
    To those till either hurt or sick;
    So with the first light gained from thee
    Ran I in chase of vanity,
    Cried dross for gold, and never thought
    My first cheap book had all I sought.
    Long reigned this vogue; and thou cast by,
    With meek, dumb looks didst woo mine eye,
    And oft left open would'st convey
    A sudden and most searching ray
    Into my soul, with whose quick touch
    Refining still, I struggled much.
    By this mild art of love at length
    Thou overcam'st my sinful strength,
    And having brought me home, didst there
    Show me that pearl I sought elsewhere,--
    Gladness, and peace, and hope, and love,
    The secret favours of the Dove;
    Her quickening kindness, smiles, and kisses,
    Exalted pleasures, crowning blisses,
    Fruition, union, glory, life,
    Thou didst lead to, and still all strife.
    Living, thou wert my soul's sure ease,
    And dying mak'st me go in peace:--
    Thy next effects no tongue can tell;
    Farewell, O Book of God! farewell!

                         H. VAUGHAN.


ON BUYING THE BIBLE

    'Tis but a folly to rejoice or boast
    How small a price thy well-bought Pen'worth cost:
    Until thy death thou shalt not fully know
    Whether thy purchase be good cheap, or no;
    And at that day, believe 't, it will appear
    If not extremely cheap, extremely dear.

               F. QUARLES. _Divine Fancies._


'I READ ONLY THE BIBLE'

Read the most useful books, and that regularly, and constantly. Steadily
spend all the morning in this employ, or, at least, five hours in
four-and-twenty.

'But I read only the Bible.' Then you ought to teach others to read only
the Bible, and, by parity of reason, to hear only the Bible. But if so,
you need preach no more. 'Just so,' said George Bell. 'And what is the
fruit? Why, now he neither reads the Bible, nor anything else. This is
rank enthusiasm.' If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above
St. Paul. He wanted others too. 'Bring the books,' says he, 'but
especially the parchments,' those wrote on parchment. 'But I have no
taste for reading.' Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your
trade.--J. WESLEY. _Minutes of Some Late Conversations._


A MAN OF ONE BOOK

I want to know one thing,--the way to heaven; how to land safe on the
happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this
very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give
me the book! At any price, give me the book of God. I have it: here is
knowledge enough for me. Let me be _homo unius libri_. Here then I am,
far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is here. In
His presence I open, I read His book.... And what I thus learn, that I
teach.--J. WESLEY. _Preface to Sermons._


HOMO UNIUS LIBRI

When St. Thomas Aquinas was asked in what manner a man might best become
learned, he answered, 'By reading one book.' The _homo unius libri_ is
indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational figurantes.--R.
SOUTHEY. _The Doctor._


THE SCRIPTURES: WHAT ARE THEY?

I remember he alleged many a scripture, but those I valued not; the
scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and
paper, of three or four shillings price. Alas! What is the scripture?
Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on horseback, or Bevis of
Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of
old fables; but for the holy scriptures I cared not.--J. BUNYAN. _Sighs
from Hell._


'THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'

I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I,
according to my judgement and experience, could so safely recommend as
teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that
was in Christ Jesus, as the _Pilgrim's Progress_. It is, in my
conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae evangelicae_ ever
produced by a writer not miraculously inspired.

This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read repeatedly
at different times, and each time with a new and different pleasure. I
read it once as a theologian--and let me assure you that there is great
theological acumen in the work--once with devotional feelings--and once
as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be
painted in such exquisitely delightful colours....

The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is composed in the lowest style of English,
without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at
once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should
be written in very plain language; the more imaginative they are the
more necessary it is to be plain.--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Table Talk._


NO BOOK LIKE THE BIBLE

I would have you every morning read a portion of the Holy Scriptures,
till you have read the Bible from the beginning to the end: observe it
well, read it reverently and attentively, set your heart upon it, and
lay it up in your memory and make it the direction of your life: it will
make you a wise and a good man. I have been acquainted somewhat with men
and books, and have had long experience in learning, and in the world:
there is no book like the Bible for excellent learning, wisdom, and use;
and it is want of understanding in them that think or speak
otherwise.--SIR M. HALE. _A Letter to one of his Sons, after his
recovery from the Smallpox._


TO A FAMILY BIBLE

      What household thoughts around thee, as their shrine,
    Cling reverently!--of anxious looks beguiled,
    My mother's eyes, upon thy page divine,
    Each day were bent--her accents gravely mild,
    Breathed out thy love: whilst I, a dreamy child,
    Wandered on breeze-like fancies oft away,
    To some lone tuft of gleaming spring-flowers wild,
    Some fresh-discovered nook for woodland play,
    Some secret nest: yet would the solemn Word
    At times, with kindlings of young wonder heard,
      Fall on my wakened spirit, there to be
    A seed not lost:--for which, in darker years,
    O Book of Heaven! I pour, with grateful tears,
      Heart blessings on the holy dead and thee!

                         FELICIA D. HEMANS.


THE BOOK OF BOOKS

No man was a greater lover of books than he [Shelley]. He was rarely to
be seen, unless attending to other people's affairs, without a volume of
some sort, generally of Plato or one of the Greek tragedians. Nor will
those who understand the real spirit of his scepticism, be surprised to
hear that one of his companions was the Bible. He valued it for the
beauty of some of its contents, for the dignity of others, and the
curiosity of all; though the philosophy of Solomon he thought too
_Epicurean_, and the inconsistencies of other parts afflicted him. His
favourite part was the book of Job, which he thought the grandest of
tragedies. He projected founding one of his own upon it; and I will
undertake to say, that Job would have sat in that tragedy with a
patience and profundity of thought worthy of the original. Being asked
on one occasion, what book he would save for himself if he could save no
other? he answered, 'The oldest book, the Bible.'--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My
Books._


A VERY PRICELESS THING

Precious temporal things are growing [in these years of peace];
priceless spiritual things. We know the Shakespeare Dramaturgy; the
Rare-Ben and Elder-Dramatist affair; which has now reached its
culmination. Yes; and precisely when the Wit-combats at the Mermaid are
waning somewhat, and our Shakespeare is about packing up for
Stratford,--there comes out another very priceless thing; a correct
Translation of the Bible; that which we still use. Priceless enough this
latter; of importance unspeakable! Reynolds and Chadderton petitioned
for it, at the Hampton-Court Conference, long since; and now, in 1611,
by labour of Reynolds, Chadderton, Dr. Abbot, and other prodigiously
learned and earnest persons, 'forty-seven in number,' it comes out
beautifully printed; dedicated to the Dread Sovereign; really in part a
benefit of his to us. And so we have it here to read, that Book of
Books: 'barbarous enough to rouse, tender enough to assuage, and
possessing how many other properties,' says Goethe;--possessing this
property, inclusive of all, add we, That it is written under the eye of
the Eternal; that it is of a Sincerity like very Death; the truest
Utterance that ever came by Alphabetic Letters from the Soul of Man.
Through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men could look,
and can still look, beyond the visual Air-firmaments and mysterious
Time-oceans, into the Light-sea of Infinitude, into the stillness of
Eternity; and discern in glimpses, with such emotions and practical
suggestions as there may be, their far-distant, longforgotten Home.--T.
CARLYLE. _Historical Sketches._


MATERIAL FOR POESY

What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit and learning in
the story of Deucalion than in that of Noah? Why will not the actions of
Samson afford as plentiful matter as the labours of Hercules? Why is not
Jephthah's daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia? and the friendship of
David and Jonathan more worthy celebration than that of Theseus and
Pirithous? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the
Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of
Ulysses or Aeneas? Are the obsolete, threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy
half so stored with great, heroical, and supernatural actions (since
verse will needs find or make such) as the wars of Joshua, of the
Judges, of David, and divers others?... All the books of the Bible are
either already most admirable and exalted pieces of poesy, or are the
best material in the world for it.--A. COWLEY. _Preface to Davideis._


SACRED AND PROFANE WRITERS

    Let those who will, hang rapturously o'er
    The flowing eloquence of Plato's page,
    Repeat, with flashing eye, the sounds that pour
    From Homer's verse as with a torrent's rage;
    Let those who list, ask Tully to assuage
    Wild hearts with high-wrought periods, and restore
    The reign of rhetoric; or maxims sage
    Winnow from Seneca's sententious lore.
    Not these, but Judah's hallowed bards, to me
    Are dear: Isaiah's noble energy;
    The temperate grief of Job; the artless strain
    Of Ruth and pastoral Amos; the high songs
    Of David; and the tale of Joseph's wrongs,
    Simply pathetic, eloquently plain.

                       SIR AUBREY DE VERE.


A STANDARD FOR LANGUAGE

It is your lordship's observation, that if it were not for the Bible and
Common Prayer Book in the vulgar tongue, we should hardly be able to
understand anything that was written among us a hundred years ago; which
is certainly true: for those books, being perpetually read in churches,
have proved a kind of standard for language, especially to the common
people.... As to the greatest parts of our liturgy, compiled long before
the translation of the Bible now in use, and little altered since, these
seem to be in as great strains of true sublime eloquence as are anywhere
to be found in our language.--J. SWIFT. _A proposal for correcting,
improving and ascertaining the English Tongue_ (Letter to the Earl of
Oxford).


THE GRAND MINE OF DICTION

... He [the translator of Homer] will find one English book and one
only, where, as in the _Iliad_ itself, perfect plainness of speech is
allied with perfect nobleness; and that book is the Bible. No one could
see this more clearly than Pope saw it: 'This pure and noble
simplicity,' he says, 'is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scripture
and Homer': yet even with Pope a woman is a 'fair', a father is a
'sire', and an old man a 'reverend sage', and so on through all the
phrases of that pseudo-Augustan, and most unbiblical, vocabulary. The
Bible, however, is undoubtedly the grand mine of diction for the
translator of Homer; and, if he knows how to discriminate truly between
what will suit him and what will not, the Bible may afford him also
invaluable lessons of style.--M. ARNOLD. _On Translating Homer._


THE ENGLISH OF THE BIBLE

Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the
Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this
country? It lives on in the ear, like a music that never can be
forgotten, like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows
how he can forgo. Its felicities seem often to be almost things rather
than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of the
national seriousness.... Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry,
in extenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads
availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the
dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped
in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden
beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all
that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and
penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. It
is his sacred thing which doubt never dimmed and controversy never
soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant,
with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is
not his Saxon Bible.--F. W. FABER. _The Interest and Characteristics of
the Lives of the Saints._


THE BIBLE AND BURNS

Search Scotland over, from the Pentland to the Solway, and there is not
a cottage-hut so poor and wretched as to be without its Bible; and
hardly one that, on the same shelf, and next to it, does not treasure a
Burns. Have the people degenerated since their adoption of this new
manual? Has their attachment to the Book of Books declined? Are their
hearts less firmly bound, than were their fathers', to the old faith and
the old virtues? I believe he that knows the most of the country will be
the readiest to answer all these questions, as every lover of genius and
virtue would desire to hear them answered.... Extraordinary ... has been
the unanimity of his critics. While differing widely in their estimates
of his character and _morale_, they have, without a single exception,
expressed a lofty idea of his powers of mind and of the excellence of
his poetry. Here, as on the subject of Shakespeare, and on scarcely any
other, have Whigs and Tories, Infidels and Christians, bigoted Scotchmen
and bigoted sons of John Bull, the high and the low, the rich and the
poor, the prosaic and the enthusiastic lovers of poetry, the
strait-laced and the morally lax, met and embraced each other.--J. G.
LOCKHART. _Life of Burns._


THE BIG HA'-BIBLE

    The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
      They round the ingle form a circle wide;
    The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
      The big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride:

           *       *       *       *       *

    The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
      How Abram was the friend of God on high;
    Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
      With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
      Or how the royal Bard did groaning lie
    Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
      Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
    Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;
    Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

                  R. BURNS. _The Cotter's Saturday Night._


'OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST'

She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with
the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all
strength; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading
till the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an
imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the
deepening twilight forming plans of self-humiliation and entire
devotedness; and, in the ardour of first discovery, renunciation seemed
to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so long been
craving in vain. She had not perceived--how could she until she had
lived longer?--the inmost truth of the old monk's outpourings, that
renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was
still panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found
the key to it. She knew nothing of doctrines and systems--of mysticism
or quietism; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the
direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came
to Maggie as an unquestioned message.

I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for which
you need only pay sixpence at a bookstall, works miracles to this day,
turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons and
treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was
written down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting; it is the
chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust and
triumph--not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who
are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all
time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations: the voice
of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced--in the
cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting
and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours--but
under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate
desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness.--G.
ELIOT. _The Mill on the Floss._


LITERARY GEOGRAPHY

_Scotland._

The globe we inhabit is divisible into two worlds; one hardly less
tangible, and far more known than the other,--the common geographical
world, and the world of books; and the latter may be as geographically
set forth. A man of letters, conversant with poetry and romance, might
draw out a very curious map, in which this world of books should be
delineated and filled up, to the delight of all genuine readers, as
truly as that in Guthrie or Pinkerton. To give a specimen, and begin
with Scotland,--Scotland would not be the mere territory it is, with a
scale of so many miles to a degree, and such and such a population. Who
(except a patriot or cosmopolite) cares for the miles or the men, or
knows that they exist, in any degree of consciousness with which he
cares for the never-dying population of books? How many generations of
men have passed away, and will pass, in Ayrshire or Dumfries, and not
all the myriads be as interesting to us as a single Burns? What have we
known of them, or shall ever know, whether lairds, lords, or ladies, in
comparison with the inspired ploughman? But we know of the bards and the
lasses, and the places which he has recorded in song; we know the scene
of 'Tam o' Shanter's' exploit; we know the pastoral landscapes ... and
the scenes immortalized in Walter Scott and the old ballads; and,
therefore, the book-map of Scotland would present us with the most
prominent of these. We should have the Border, with its banditti, towns,
and woods; Tweedside, Melrose, and Roslin, 'Edina,' otherwise called
Edinburgh and Auld Reekie, or the town of Hume, Robertson, and others;
Woodhouselee, and other classical and haunted places; the bower built by
the fair hands of 'Bessie Bell' and 'Mary Gray'; the farm-houses of
Burns's friends; the scenes of his loves and sorrows; the land of 'Old
Mortality', of the 'Gentle Shepherd', and of 'Ossian'. The Highlands,
and the great blue billowy domains of heather, would be distinctly
marked out, in their most poetical regions; and we should have the
tracks of Ben Jonson to Hawthornden, of 'Rob Roy' to his hiding-places,
and of 'Jeanie Deans' towards England. Abbotsford, be sure, would not
be left out; nor the house of the 'Antiquary'--almost as real a man as
his author. Nor is this all: for we should have older Scotland, the
Scotland of James the First, and of 'Peeblis at the Play', and Gawin
Douglas, and Bruce, and Wallace; we should have older Scotland still,
the Scotland of Ariosto, with his tale of 'Ginevra', and the new
'Andromeda', delivered from the sea-monster at the Isle of Ebuda (the
Hebrides); and there would be the residence of the famous 'Launcelot of
the Lake', at Berwick, called the Joyeuse Garde, and other ancient sites
of chivalry and romance; nor should the nightingale be left out in
'Ginevra's' bower, for Ariosto has put it there, and there, accordingly,
it is and has been heard, let ornithology say what it will; for what
ornithologist knows so much of the nightingale as a poet? We would have
an inscription put on the spot--'Here the nightingale sings, contrary to
what has been affirmed by White and others.' This is the Scotland of
books, and a beautiful place it is. I will venture to affirm, Sir, even
to yourself, that it is a more beautiful place than the other Scotland,
always excepting to an exile or a lover.


_England._

Book-England, on the map, would shine as the Albion of the old Giants;
as the 'Logres' of the Knights of the Round Table; as the scene of
Amadis of Gaul, with its _island_ of Windsor; as the abode of fairies,
of the Druids, of the divine Countess of Coventry, of Guy, Earl of
Warwick, of 'Alfred' (whose reality was a romance), of the Fair
Rosamond, of the _Arcades_ and _Comus_, of Chaucer and Spenser, of the
poets of the Globe and the Mermaid, the wits of Twickenham and Hampton
Court. Fleet Street would be Johnson's Fleet Street; the Tower would
belong to Julius Caesar; and Blackfriars to Suckling, Vandyke, and the
_Dunciad_. Chronology and the mixture of truth and fiction, that is to
say, of one sort of truth and another, would come to nothing in a work
of this kind; for, as it has been before observed, things are real in
proportion as they are impressive. And who has not as 'gross, open, and
palpable' an idea of 'Falstaff' in Eastcheap, as of 'Captain Grose'
himself, beating up his quarters? A map of fictitious, literary, and
historical London, would, of itself, constitute a great curiosity.


_Ireland._

Swift speaks of maps, in which they

    Place elephants for want of towns.

Here would be towns and elephants too, the popular and the prodigious.
How much would not Swift do for Ireland, in this geography of wit and
talent! What a figure would not St. Patrick's Cathedral make! The other
day, mention was made of a 'Dean of St. Patrick's' _now living_; as if
there was, or ever could be, more than one Dean of St. Patrick's! In the
Irish maps we should have the Saint himself driving out all venomous
creatures (what a pity that the most venomous retain a property as
absentees!); and there would be the old Irish kings, and O'Donoghue with
his White Horse, and the lady of the 'gold wand' who made the miraculous
virgin pilgrimage, and all the other marvels of lakes and ladies, and
the Round Towers still remaining to perplex the antiquary, and
Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village', and Goldsmith himself, and the
birthplaces of Steele and Sterne, and the brief hour of poor Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, and Carolan with his harp, and the schools of the poor Latin
boys under the hedges, and Castle Rackrent, and Edgeworth's-town, and
the Giant's Causeway, and Ginleas and other classical poverties, and
Spenser's castle on the river Mulla, with the wood-gods whom his pipe
drew round him.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _The World of Books._


ON 'CORYAT'S CRUDITES'

    Tom Coryat, I have seen thy Crudities,
    And, methinks, very strangely brewed--it is
    With piece and patch together glued--it is
    And how, like thee, ill-favoured hued--it is
    In many lines I see that lewd--it is
    And therefore fit to be subdued--it is

    Within thy broiling brain-pan stewed--it is
    And 'twixt thy grinding jaws well chewed--it is
    Within thy stomach closely mewed--it is
    And last, in Court and Country spewed--it is
    But now by wisdom's eye that viewed--it is
    They all agree that very rude--it is
    With foolery so full endued--it is

    That wondrously by fools pursued--it is
    As sweet as gall's amaritude--it is
    And seeming full of pulchritude--it is
    But more to write, but to intrude--it is
    And therefore wisdom to conclude--it is.

                J. TAYLOR. _The World's Eighth Wonder._


LITERATURE FOR DESOLATE ISLANDS

    I've thought very often 'twould be a good thing
    In all public collections of books, if a wing
    Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands,
    Marked _Literature suited to desolate islands_,
    And filled with such books as could never be read
    Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,--
    Such books as one's wrecked on in small country taverns,
    Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns,
    Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented,
    As a climax of woe, would to Job have presented,
    Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so
    Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe;

           *       *       *       *       *

    I propose to shut up every doer of wrong
    With these desperate books, for such term, short or long,
    As by statute in such cases made and provided,
    Shall be by you wise legislators decided.

                  J. R. LOWELL. _A Fable for Critics._


I have sometimes heard of an Iliad in a nutshell; but it has been my
fortune to have much oftener seen a nutshell in an Iliad.--J. SWIFT. _A
Tale of a Tub._


BOOKS FOR THE SALON

I am sure that if Madame de Sablé lived now, books would be seen in her
salon as part of its natural indispensable furniture; not brought out,
and strewed here and there when 'company was coming', but as habitual
presences in her room, wanting which, she would want a sense of warmth
and comfort and companionship. Putting out books as a sort of
preparation for an evening, as a means for making it pass agreeably, is
running a great risk. In the first place, books are by such people, and
on such occasions, chosen more for their outside than their inside. And
in the next, they are the 'mere material with which wisdom (or wit)
builds'; and if persons don't know how to use the material, they will
suggest nothing. I imagine Madame de Sablé would have the volumes she
herself was reading, or those which, being new, contained any matter of
present interest, left about, as they would naturally be. I could also
fancy that her guests would not feel bound to talk continually, whether
they had anything to say or not, but that there might be pauses of not
unpleasant silence--a quiet darkness out of which they might be certain
that the little stars would glimmer soon. I can believe that in such
pauses of repose, some one might open a book, and catch on a suggestive
sentence, might dash off again into a full flow of conversation. But I
cannot fancy any grand preparations for what was to be said among
people, each of whom brought the best dish in bringing himself; and
whose own store of living, individual thought and feeling, and
mother-wit, would be infinitely better than any cut-and-dry
determination to devote the evening to mutual improvement. If people are
really good and wise, their goodness and their wisdom flow out
unconsciously, and benefit like sunlight. So, books for reference, books
for impromptu suggestion, but never books to serve for texts to a
lecture.--ELIZABETH C. GASKELL. _Company Manners._


Far more seemly were it for thee to have thy study full of books, than
thy purse full of money.--J. LYLY. _Euphues._


THE LIBRARY AND THE GRAVE

TO SIR H. G.

Sir,--This letter hath more merits than one of more diligence, for I
wrote it in bed, and with much pain. I have occasion to sit late some
nights in my study (which your books make a pretty library) and now I
find that that room hath a wholesome emblematic use: for having under it
a vault, I make that promise me that I shall die reading; since my book
and a grave are so near.--JOHN DONNE. _Letters to Several Persons of
Honour._


THE LIBRARY A GLORIOUS COURT

          That place, that does contain
    My books, the best companions, is to me
    A glorious court, where hourly I converse
    With the old sages and philosophers.
    And sometimes, for variety, I confer
    With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
    Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
    Unto a strict account: and in my fancy,
    Deface their ill-planned statues. Can I then
    Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace
    Uncertain vanities? No: be it your care
    To augment your heap of wealth; it shall be mine
    To increase in knowledge. Lights there for my study!

                 J. FLETCHER. _The Elder Brother._


THE LIBRARY AS STUDY

I like a great library next my study; but for the study itself, give me
a small snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be
only one window in it, looking upon trees. Some prefer a place with few,
or no books at all--nothing but a chair or a table, like Epictetus; but
I should say that these were philosophers, not lovers of books, if I did
not recollect that Montaigne was both. He had a study in a round tower,
walled as aforesaid. It is true, one forgets one's books while
writing--at least they say so. For my part, I think I have them in a
sort of sidelong mind's eye; like a second thought, which is none--like
a waterfall, or a whispering wind.

I dislike a grand library to study in. I mean an immense apartment, with
books all in Museum order, especially wire-safed. I say nothing against
the Museum itself, or public libraries. They are capital places to go
to, but not to sit in; and talking of this, I hate to read in public,
and in strange company. The jealous silence; the dissatisfied looks of
the messengers; the inability to help yourself; the not knowing whether
you really ought to trouble the messengers, much less the Gentleman in
black, or brown, who is, perhaps, half a trustee; with a variety of
other jarrings between privacy and publicity, prevent one's settling
heartily to work.... A grand private library, which the master of the
house also makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of
books, much less of authorship. I cannot take kindly to it. It is
certainly not out of envy; for three parts of the books are generally
trash, and I can seldom think of the rest and the proprietor together.
It reminds me of a fine gentleman, of a collector, of a patron, of Gil
Blas and the Marquis of Marialva; of anything but genius and comfort. I
have a particular hatred of a round table (not _the_ Round Table, for
that was a dining one) covered and irradiated with books, and never met
with one in the house of a clever man but once. It is the reverse of
Montaigne's Round Tower. Instead of bringing the books around you, they
all seem turning another way, and eluding your hands.

Conscious of my propriety and comfort in these matters, I take an
interest in the bookcases as well as the books of my friends. I long to
meddle and dispose them after my own notions.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My
Books._


Come, and take choice of all my library.

    W. SHAKESPEARE. _Titus Andronicus._


Libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly
informed, might bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity,
and more for use.--G. DYER.


THE STUDY

      Here, while the night-wind wreaked its frantic will
    On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill,
    Rent the cracked topsail from its quivering yard,
    And rived the oak a thousand storms had scarred,
    Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone,
    Nor felt a breath to slant its trembling cone.

      Not all unblessed the mild interior scene
    Where the red curtain spread its falling screen;
    O'er some light task the lonely hours were passed,
    And the long evening only flew too fast;
    Or the wide chair its leathern arms would lend
    In genial welcome to some easy friend,
    Stretched on its bosom with relaxing nerves,
    Slow moulding, plastic, to its hollow curves;
    Perchance indulging, if of generous creed,
    In brave Sir Walter's dream-compelling weed.
    Or, happier still, the evening hour would bring
    To the round table its expected ring,
    And while the punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,--
    Its silver cherubs, smiling as they heard,--
    Our hearts would open, as at evening's hour
    The close-sealed primrose frees its hidden flower.

      Such the warm life this dim retreat has known,
    Not quite deserted when its guests were flown;
    Nay, filled with friends, an unobtrusive set,
    Guiltless of calls and cards and etiquette,
    Ready to answer, never known to ask,
    Claiming no service, prompt for every task.

      On those dark shelves no housewife hand profanes,
    O'er his mute files the monarch folio reigns;
    A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time,
    That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime,
    Each knows his place, and each may claim his part
    In some quaint corner of his master's heart.
    This old Decretal, won from Kloss's hoards,
    Thick-leaved, brass-cornered, ribbed with oaken boards,
    Stands the grey patriarch of the graver rows,
    Its fourth ripe century narrowing to its close;
    Not daily conned, but glorious still to view,
    With glistening letters wrought in red and blue.
    There towers Stagira's all-embracing sage,
    The Aldine anchor on his opening page;
    There sleep the births of Plato's heavenly mind,
    In yon dark tomb by jealous clasps confined.
    _Olim e libris_ (dare I call it mine?)
    Of Yale's grave Head and Killingworth's divine!
    In those square sheets the songs of Maro fill
    The silvery types of smooth-leaved Baskerville;
    High over all, in close, compact array,
    Their classic wealth the Elzevirs display.

    In lower regions of the sacred space
    Range the dense volumes of a humbler race;
    There grim chirurgeons all their mysteries teach,
    In spectral pictures, or in crabbèd speech;
    Harvey and Haller, fresh from Nature's page,
    Shoulder the dreamers of an earlier age,
    Lully and Geber, and the learnèd crew
    That loved to talk of all they could not do.
    Why count the rest,--those names of later days
    That many love, and all agree to praise,--
    Or point the titles, where a glance may read
    The dangerous lines of party or of creed?
    Too well, perchance, the chosen list would show
    What few may care and none can claim to know.
    Each has his features, whose exterior seal
    A brush may copy, or a sunbeam steal;
    Go to his study,--on the nearest shelf
    Stands the mosaic portrait of himself.

      What though for months the tranquil dust descends,
    Whitening the heads of these mine ancient friends,
    While the damp offspring of the modern press
    Flaunts on my table with its pictured dress;
    Not less I love each dull familiar face,
    Nor less should miss it from the appointed place;
    I snatch the book, along whose burning leaves
    His scarlet web our wild romancer weaves,
    Yet, while proud Hester's fiery pangs I share,
    My old MAGNALIA must be standing _there_!

                        O. W. HOLMES.


THE CONSULTING ROOM OF A WISE MAN

The great consulting room of a wise man is a library. When I am in
perplexity about life, I have but to come here, and, without fee or
reward, I commune with the wisest souls that God has blessed the world
with. If I want a discourse on immortality Plato comes to my help. If I
want to know the human heart Shakespeare opens all its chambers.
Whatever be my perplexity or doubt, I know exactly the great man to call
to me, and he comes in the kindest way, he listens to my doubts and
tells me his convictions. So that a library may be regarded as the
solemn chamber in which a man can take counsel with all that have been
wise and great and good and glorious amongst the men that have gone
before him. If we come down for a moment and look at the bare and
immediate utilities of a library we find that here a man gets himself
ready for his calling, arms himself for his profession, finds out the
facts that are to determine his trade, prepares himself for his
examination. The utilities of it are endless and priceless. It is too a
place of pastime; for man has no amusement more innocent, more sweet,
more gracious, more elevating, and more fortifying than he can find in a
library.--GEORGE DAWSON. _Address at the opening of the Birmingham Free
Reference Library_, 1866.


THE LIBRARY A KEY TO CHARACTER

The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar's study or
library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his
tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.

Of course, you know there are many fine houses where a library is a part
of the upholstery, so to speak. Books in handsome binding kept locked
under plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to stylish
establishments as servants in livery, who sit with folded arms, are to
stylish equipages. I suppose those wonderful statues with the folded
arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books with
the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's business
whether they do or not, and it is best not to ask too many questions.

This sort of thing is common enough, but there is another case that may
prove deceptive if you undertake to judge from appearances. Once in a
while you will come on a house where you will find a family of readers
and almost no library. Some of the most indefatigable devourers of
literature have very few books. They belong to book clubs, they haunt
the public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow or other get
hold of everything they want, scoop out all it holds for them, and have
done with it.--O. W. HOLMES. _The Poet at the Breakfast-Table._


THE SCENT OF BOOKS

I know men who say they had as lief read any book in a library copy as
in one from their own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For one
thing, I know every book of mine by its _scent_, and I have but to put
my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. My
Gibbon, for example, my well-bound eight-volume Milman edition, which I
have read and read and read again for more than thirty years--never do I
open it but the scent of the noble pages restores to me all the exultant
happiness of that moment when I received it as a prize. Or my
Shakespeare, the great Cambridge Shakespeare--it has an odour which
carries me yet further back in life; for these volumes belonged to my
father, and before I was old enough to read them with understanding, it
was often permitted me, as a treat, to take down one of them from the
bookcase, and reverently to turn the leaves. The volumes smell exactly
as they did in that old time, and what a strange tenderness comes upon
me when I hold one of them in hand. For that reason I do not often read
Shakespeare in this edition.--G. GISSING. _The Private Papers of Henry
Ryecroft._


                              Of his gentleness,
    Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me,
    From mine own library with volumes that
    I prize above my dukedom.

                  W. SHAKESPEARE. _The Tempest._


AN EPISCOPAL LIBRARY

    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 Greece
    To 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.


A MODERN LIBRARY

    The Doctor with himself decreed
    To nod--or, much the same, to read.
    He always seemed a wondrous lover
    Of painted leaf and Turkey cover,
    While no regard at all was had
    To sots in homely russet clad,
    Concluding he must be within
    A calf, that wore without his skin.

    But, though his thoughts were fixed to read,
    The treatise was not yet decreed:
    Uncertain to devote the day
    To politics or else to play;
    What theme would best his genius suit,
    Grave morals or a dull dispute,
    Where both contending champions boast
    The victory which neither lost;
    As chiefs are oft in story read
    Each to pursue, when neither fled.
      He enters now the shining dome
    Where crowded authors sweat for room;
    So close a man could hardly say
    Which were more fixed, the shelves or they.

           *       *       *       *       *

    To please the eye, the highest space
    A set of wooden volumes grace;
    Pure timber authors that contain
    As much as some that boast a brain;
    That Alma Mater never viewed,
    Without degrees to writers hewed:
    Yet solid thus just emblems show
    Of 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 looks
    United, 'tis not so with books):
    The champions of each different art
    Had stations all assigned apart,
    Fearing the rival chiefs might be
    For quarrels still, nor dead agree.
    The schoolmen first in long array
    Their bulky lumber round display;
    Seemed to lament their wretched doom,
    And heave for more convenient room;
    While doctrine each of weight contains
    To 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 found
    Than 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._


SAFE AND UNTOUCHED

'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._


CIBBER'S LIBRARY

    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 here
    The 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 atone
    And 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 Rome
    Well 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 lays
    That altar crowns; a folio Commonplace
    Founds 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._


MR. SHANDY'S LIBRARY

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 IN THE LIBRARY

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 antique and 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.

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 days
    Of Thalaba went by!

             SIR W. SCOTT. _Guy Mannering._


              Me, poor man,--my library
    Was dukedom large enough.

               W. SHAKESPEARE. _The Tempest._


THE PEASANT'S LIBRARY

      On shelf of deal beside the cuckoo-clock,
    Of cottage-reading rests the chosen stock;
    Learning we lack, not books, but have a kind
    For 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 reason _why_? and _how_?
    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._


THE LIBRARY IN THE GARRET

                                Books, books, books!
    I had found the secret of a garret-room
    Piled high with cases in my father's name;
    Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
    Among the giant fossils of my past,
    Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
    Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
    At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
    In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
    The first book first. And how I felt it beat
    Under 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._


MONTAIGNE'S LIBRARY

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 seclude myself 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.


A COLLOQUY IN A LIBRARY

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 some of 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.

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; that _Imago 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 the _Hic jacet_ of a tombstone. There may be 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 and
_Philosophe_ (equally misnamed); Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads
and Cavaliers!

    Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here
    Is nature's secretary, the philosopher:
    And wily statesman, which teach how to tie
    The sinews of a city's mystic body;
    Here gathering chroniclers: and by them stand
    Giddy 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 which I 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.'_


CHARLES LAMB'S 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._


STANZAS COMPOSED IN THE REV. J. MITFORD'S LIBRARY

    O! I methinks could dwell content
      A 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 leaves
    A gentler gale its spirit heaves.

    Nor less the eye enraptured roves
      O'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 hold
    With them, the mighty bards of old.

    With them--whose master spirits yet
      In deathless numbers dwell,
    Whose works defy us to forget
      Their 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 known
    With 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 SHRINES OF THE ANCIENT SAINTS

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._


A MOST HORRIBLE INFAMY

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._


LIBRARIES FOR EVERY CITY

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._


THE LIBRARY

    'Let there be light!' God spake of old,
    And over chaos dark and cold,
    And through the dead and formless frame
    Of nature, life and order came.

    Faint was the light at first that shone
    On 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'erran
    The earth, uplifting brute and man;
    And mind, at length, in symbols dark
    Its 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 men
    Whose 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 themselves
    Alive along these crowded shelves;
    And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
    And Chaucer paints anew his age.

    As if some Pantheon's marbles broke
    Their stony trance, and lived and spoke,
    Life thrills along the alcoved hall,
    The lords of thought await our call!

                    J. G. WHITTIER.


THE REFERENCE LIBRARY

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
books proper 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.


IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM LIBRARY

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 wearies
of 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._


THE LIBRARY AN HERACLEA

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 those _lata 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
an _awful_ place! 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 not _that_ which 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._


BOOKS IN A NEW LIGHT

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 and _ne plus ultra_ of everything that a book should
be.... On finding myself asked for a contribution to the _Universal
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's _Complete 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 one took;
the four volumes, however, of Bede in Giles's _Anglican Fathers_ are not
open to this objection, and I have reserved them for favourable
consideration. Mather's _Magnalia_ might do, but the binding does not
please me; Cureton's _Corpus Ignatianum_ might also do if it were not
too thin. I do not like taking Norton's _Genuineness 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's _Church History of England_, Lingard's
_Anglo-Saxon Church_, and Cardwell's _Documentary Annals_, though none
of them as good as Frost, are works of considerable merit; but on the
whole I think Arvine's _Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdote_ is
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._


ON THE SIGHT OF A GREAT LIBRARY

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 of question, 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._


REFLECTIONS IN A LIBRARY

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 and influences
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 the _authors_. 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 their _readers_ or
_possessors_. 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._


THOUGHTS IN A LIBRARY

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

    'The wisest, brightest, meanest, of mankind.'

For his wisdom has embalmed his meanness.

Those volumes contain the weighty, if not wise opinions of one who,
amidst penury and wretchedness, first learnt to moralize with companions
as poor and wretched as himself. Even in his latter years, when sought
by a monarch, and listened to with submission by all who approached him,
his life can scarcely be called a happy one; yet he must have enjoyed
some moments of triumph, if not of happiness, in contemplating the
severe but well-merited rebuke which he inflicted upon that courtier,
who could behold his difficulties with all the indifference that belongs
to good breeding, and then thought fit, in the hour of his success, to
encumber him with paltry praises.

Those poems were the burning words of one

    '... Cradled into poetry by wrong,
    Who learnt in suffering what he taught in song.'

The slightest foibles of this unhappy man have been brought into odious
prominence, for he was the favourite author of his age, and therefore
the property of the public.

That boyish book absolved its author from a father's cares; and he was
one to whom those cares would have been dearest joys, who loved to look
upon a poor man's child. Listen to the music of his sadness--

    'I see the deep's untrampled floor
      With green and purple seaweeds strown;
    I see the waves upon the shore,
      Like light dissolv'd in star-showers, thrown:
    I sit upon the sands alone,
      The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
    Is flashing round me, and a tone
      Arises from its measured motion,
    How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion!'

The sharp arrows of criticism were successfully directed against that
next volume, and are said to have been the means of hurrying its author
to that world of dreams and shadows, for which, in the critic's opinion,
he was so pre-eminently fitted.

    'Where is the youth, for deeds immortal born,
    Who loved to whisper to the embattled corn,
    And clustered woodbines, breathing o'er the stream
    Endymion's beauteous passion for a dream?'

You already smile, my friend; but to know the heights and the depths,
you must turn your attention to those numberless, unread, unheard-of
volumes. Their authors did not suffer from the severity of the critic or
the judge, but were only neglected. If Mephistopheles ever requires rest
and seclusion--But, hark! is there not a laugh? and that grotesque face
in the carved woodwork, how scoffingly it is looking down upon us!--SIR
A. HELPS. _Thoughts in a Cloister._


THE TRUE POEM ON THE LIBRARY

Let us compare the different ways in which Crabbe and Foster (certainly
a _prose_ poet) deal with a library. Crabbe describes minutely and
successfully the outer features of the volumes, their colours, clasps,
the stubborn ridges of their bindings, the illustrations which adorn
them, so well that you feel yourself among them, and they become
sensible to touch almost as to sight. But there he stops, and sadly
fails, we think, in bringing out the living and moral interest which
gathers around a multitude of books, or even around a single volume.
This Foster has amply done. The speaking silence of a number of books,
where, though it were the wide Bodleian or Vatican, not one whisper
could be heard, and yet where, as in an antechamber, so many great
spirits are waiting to deliver their messages--their churchyard
stillness continuing even when their readers are moving to their pages,
in joy or agony, as to the sound of martial instruments--their awaking,
as from deep slumber, to speak with miraculous organ, like the shell
which has only to be lifted, and 'pleased it remembers its august
abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs there'--their power of drawing
tears, kindling blushes, awakening laughter, calming or quickening the
motions of the life's-blood, lulling to repose, or rousing to
restlessness--the meaning which radiates from their quiet
countenances--the tale of shame or glory which their title-pages
tell--the memories suggested by the character of their authors, and of
the readers who have throughout successive centuries perused them--the
thrilling thoughts excited by the sight of names and notes inscribed on
their margins or blank pages by hands long since mouldered in the dust,
or by those dear to us as our life's-blood, who have been snatched from
our sides--the aspects of gaiety or of gloom connected with the bindings
and the age of volumes--the effects of sunshine playing as if on a
congregation of happy faces, making the duskiest shine and the gloomiest
be glad--or of shadow suffusing a sombre air over all--the joy of the
proprietor of a large library, who feels that Nebuchadnezzar watching
great Babylon, or Napoleon reviewing his legions, will not stand
comparison with himself seated amid the broad maps, and rich prints, and
numerous volumes which his wealth has enabled him to enjoy--all such
hieroglyphics of interest and meaning has Foster included and
interpreted in one gloomy but noble meditation, and his introduction to
Doddridge is the true 'Poem on the Library'.--G. GILFILLAN. _Gallery of
Literary Portraits: George Crabbe._


THE LIBRARY

    When the sad soul, by care and grief oppressed,
    Looks round the world, but looks in vain for rest;
    When every object that appears in view,
    Partakes her gloom and seems dejected too;
    Where shall affliction from itself retire?
    Where fade away and placidly expire?
    Alas! we fly to silent scenes in vain;
    Care blasts the honours of the flowery plain:
    Care veils in clouds the sun's meridian beam,
    Sighs through the grove and murmurs in the stream;
    For when the soul is labouring in despair,
    In vain the body breathes a purer air:
    No storm-tossed sailor sighs for slumbering seas,--
    He dreads the tempest, but invokes the breeze;
    On the smooth mirror of the deep resides
    Reflected woe, and o'er unruffled tides
    The ghost of every former danger glides.
    Thus, in the calms of life, we only see
    A steadier image of our misery;
    But lively gales and gently-clouded skies
    Disperse the sad reflections as they rise;
    And busy thoughts and little cares avail
    To ease the mind, when rest and reason fail.
    When the dull thought, by no designs employed,
    Dwells on the past, or suffered or enjoyed,
    We bleed anew in every former grief,
    And joys departed furnish no relief.

      Not Hope herself, with all her flattering art,
    Can cure this stubborn sickness of the heart:
    The soul disdains each comfort she prepares,
    And anxious searches for congenial cares;
    Those lenient cares, which, with our own combined,
    By mixed sensations ease the afflicted mind,
    And steal our grief away and leave their own behind;
    A lighter grief! which feeling hearts endure
    Without regret, nor e'en demand a cure.

      But what strange art, what magic can dispose
    The troubled mind to change its native woes?
    Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
    Others more wretched, more undone than we?
    This, books can do;--nor this alone; they give
    New views to life, and teach us how to live;
    They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
    Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
    Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
    The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
    Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
    They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
    Nor tell to various people various things,
    But show to subjects, what they show to kings.

      Come, Child of Care! to make thy soul serene,
    Approach the treasures of this tranquil scene;
    Survey the dome, and, as the doors unfold,
    The soul's best cure, in all her cares, behold!
    Where mental wealth the poor in thought may find,
    And mental physic the diseased in mind;
    See here the balms that passion's wounds assuage;
    See coolers here, that damp the fire of rage;
    Here alteratives, by slow degrees control
    The chronic habits of the sickly soul;
    And round the heart and o'er the aching head,
    Mild opiates here their sober influence shed.
    Now bid thy soul man's busy scenes exclude,
    And view composed this silent multitude:--
    Silent they are, but, though deprived of sound,
    Here all the living languages abound;
    Here all that live no more; preserved they lie,
    In tombs that open to the curious eye.

      Blessed be the gracious Power, who taught mankind
    To stamp a lasting image of the mind!--
    Beasts may convey, and tuneful birds may sing,
    Their mutual feelings, in the opening spring;
    But man alone has skill and power to send
    The heart's warm dictates to the distant friend:
    'Tis his alone to please, instruct, advise
    Ages remote, and nations yet to rise.

      In sweet repose, when labour's children sleep,
    When joy forgets to smile and care to weep,
    When passion slumbers in the lover's breast,
    And fear and guilt partake the balm of rest,
    Why then denies the studious man to share
    Man's common good, who feels his common care?

      Because the hope is his, that bids him fly
    Night's soft repose, and sleep's mild power defy;
    That after-ages may repeat his praise,
    And fame's fair meed be his, for length of days.
    Delightful prospect! when we leave behind
    A worthy offspring of the fruitful mind!
    Which, born and nursed through many an anxious day,
    Shall all our labour, all our care repay.

      Yet all are not these births of noble kind,
    Not all the children of a vigorous mind;
    But where the wisest should alone preside,
    The weak would rule us, and the blind would guide;
    Nay, man's best efforts taste of man, and show
    The poor and troubled source from which they flow:
    Where most he triumphs, we his wants perceive,
    And for his weakness in his wisdom grieve.
    But though imperfect all; yet wisdom loves
    This seat serene, and virtue's self approves:--
    Here come the grieved, a change of thought to find;
    The curious here, to feed a craving mind;
    Here the devout their peaceful temple choose;
    And here the poet meets his favouring muse.

      With awe, around these silent walks I tread;
    These are the lasting mansions of the dead:--
    'The dead,' methinks a thousand tongues reply;
    'These are the tombs of such as cannot die!
    Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime,
    And laugh at all the little strife of time.'

      Hail, then, immortals! ye who shine above,
    Each, in his sphere, the literary Jove;
    And ye the common people of these skies,
    A humbler crowd of nameless deities;
    Whether 'tis yours to lead the willing mind
    Through history's mazes, and the turnings find;
    Or whether, led by science, ye retire,
    Lost and bewildered in the vast desire;
    Whether the Muse invites you to her bowers,
    And crowns your placid brows with living flowers;
    Or godlike wisdom teaches you to show
    The noblest road to happiness below;
    Or men and manners prompt the easy page
    To mark the flying follies of the age:
    Whatever good ye boast, that good impart;
    Inform the head and rectify the heart.

      Lo! all in silence, all in order stand
    And mighty folios first, a lordly band;
    Then quartos their well-ordered ranks maintain.
    And light octavos fill a spacious plain:
    See yonder, ranged in more frequented rows,
    A humbler band of duodecimos;
    While undistinguished trifles swell the scene,
    The last new play and frittered magazine.
    Thus 'tis in life, where first the proud, the great,
    In leagued assembly keep their cumbrous state;
    Heavy and huge, they fill the world with dread,
    Are much admired, and are but little read:
    The commons next, a middle rank, are found;
    Professions fruitful pour their offspring round:
    Reasoners and wits are next their place allowed,
    And last, of vulgar tribes a countless crowd.

      First, let us view the form, the size, the dress;
    For these the manners, nay the mind express;
    That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid;
    Those ample clasps, of solid metal made;
    The close-pressed leaves, unclosed 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;
    These all a sage and laboured work proclaim,
    A painful candidate for lasting fame:
    No idle wit, no trifling verse can lurk
    In the deep bosom of that weighty work;
    No playful thoughts degrade the solemn style,
    Nor one light sentence claims a transient smile.

      Hence, in these times, untouched the pages lie,
    And slumber out their immortality:
    They _had_ their day, when, after all his toil,
    His morning study, and his midnight oil,
    At length an author's ONE great work appeared,
    By patient hope, and length of days, endeared:
    Expecting nations hailed it from the press;
    Poetic friends prefixed each kind address;
    Princes and kings received the ponderous gift,
    And ladies read the work they could not lift.
    Fashion, though Folly's child, and guide of fools,
    Rules e'en the wisest, and in learning rules;
    From crowds and courts to Wisdom's seat she goes,
    And reigns triumphant o'er her mother's foes.

      For lo! these favourites of the ancient mode
    Lie all neglected like the Birth-day Ode;
    Ah! needless now this weight of massy chain;
    Safe in themselves, the once-loved works remain;
    No readers now invade their still retreat,
    None try to steal them from their parent-seat;
    Like ancient beauties, they may now discard
    Chains, bolts, and locks, and lie without a guard.
    Our patient fathers trifling themes laid by,
    And rolled o'er laboured works the attentive eye;
    Page after page, the much-enduring men
    Explored, the deeps and shallows of the pen;
    Till, every former note and comment known,
    They marked the spacious margin with their own:
    Minute corrections proved their studious care,
    The little index, pointing, told us where;
    And many an emendation showed the age
    Looked far beyond the rubric title-page.

      Our nicer palates lighter labours seek,
    Cloyed with a folio-_Number_ once a week;
    Bibles, with cuts and comments, thus go down:
    E'en light Voltaire is _numbered_ through the town:
    Thus physic flies abroad, and thus the law,
    From men of study, and from men of straw;
    Abstracts, abridgements, please the fickle times,
    Pamphlets and plays, and politics and rhymes:
    But though to write be now a task of ease,
    The task is hard by manly arts to please,
    When all our weakness is exposed to view,
    And half our judges are our rivals too.

      Amid these works, on which the eager eye
    Delights to fix, or glides reluctant by,
    When all combined, their decent pomp display,
    Where shall we first our early offering pay?----

      To thee, DIVINITY! to thee, the light
    And guide of mortals, through their mental night;
    By whom we learn our hopes and fears to guide;
    To bear with pain, and to contend with pride;
    When grieved, to pray; when injured, to forgive;
    And with the world in charity to live.

      Not truths like these inspired that numerous race,
    Whose pious labours fill this ample space;
    But questions nice, where doubt on doubt arose,
    Awaked to war the long-contending foes.
    For dubious meanings, learned polemics strove,
    And wars on faith prevented works of love;
    The brands of discord far around were hurled,
    And holy wrath inflamed a sinful world:--
    Dull though impatient, peevish though devout,
    With wit disgusting and despised without;
    Saints in design, in execution men,
    Peace in their looks, and vengeance in their pen.

      Methinks I see, and sicken at the sight,
    Spirits of spleen from yonder pile alight;
    Spirits who prompted every damning page,
    With pontiff pride and still-increasing rage:
    Lo! how they stretch their gloomy wings around,
    And lash with furious strokes the trembling ground!
    They pray, they fight, they murder, and they weep,--
    Wolves in their vengeance, in their manners sheep;
    Too well they act the prophet's fatal part,
    Denouncing evil with a zealous heart;
    And each, like Jonas, is displeased if God
    Repent his anger, or withhold his rod.
    But here the dormant fury rests unsought,
    And Zeal sleeps soundly by the foes she fought;
    Here all the rage of controversy ends,
    And rival zealots rest like bosom-friends:
    An Athanasian here, in deep repose,
    Sleeps with the fiercest of his Arian foes;
    Socinians here with Calvinists abide,
    And thin partitions angry chiefs divide;
    Here wily Jesuits simple Quakers meet,
    And Bellarmine has rest at Luther's feet.
    Great authors, for the church's glory fired,
    Are, for the church's peace, to rest retired;
    And close beside, a mystic, maudlin race,
    Lie, 'Crums of Comfort for the Babes of Grace.'

      Against her foes Religion well defends
    Her sacred truths, but often fears her friends;
    If learned, their pride, if weak, their zeal she dreads,
    And their hearts' weakness, who have soundest heads:
    But most she fears the controversial pen,
    The holy strife of disputatious men;
    Who the blessed Gospel's peaceful page explore,
    Only to fight against its precepts more.

      Near to these seats, behold yon slender frames,
    All closely filled and marked with modern names;
    Where no fair science ever shows her face,
    Few sparks of genius, and no spark of grace;
    There sceptics rest, a still-increasing throng,
    And stretch their widening wings ten thousand strong:
    Some in close fight their dubious claims maintain;
    Some skirmish lightly, fly and fight again;
    Coldly profane, and impiously gay,
    Their end the same, though various in their way.

      When first Religion came to bless the land,
    Her friends were then a firm believing band;
    To doubt was, then, to plunge in guilt extreme,
    And all was gospel that a monk could dream;
    Insulted Reason fled the grovelling soul,
    For fear to guide, and visions to control:
    But now, when Reason has assumed her throne,
    She, in her turn, demands to reign alone;
    Rejecting all that lies beyond her view,
    And, being judge, will be a witness too:
    Insulted Faith then leaves the doubtful mind,
    To seek for truth, without a power to find:
    Ah! when will both in friendly beams unite,
    And pour on erring man resistless light?

      Next to the seats, well stored with works divine,
    An ample space, PHILOSOPHY! is thine;
    Our reason's guide, by whose assisting light
    We trace the moral bounds of wrong and right;
    Our guide through nature, from the sterile clay,
    To the bright orbs of yon celestial way!
    'Tis thine, the great, the golden chain to trace,
    Which runs through all, connecting race with race;
    Save where those puzzling, stubborn links remain,
    Which thy inferior light pursues in vain:--

      How vice and virtue in the soul contend;
    How widely differ, yet how nearly blend!
    What various passions war on either part,
    And now confirm, now melt the yielding heart:
    How Fancy loves around the world to stray,
    While Judgement slowly picks his sober way;
    The stores of memory, and the flights sublime
    Of genius, bound by neither space nor time;--
    All these divine Philosophy explores,
    Till, lost in awe, she wonders and adores.
    From these, descending to the earth, she turns,
    And matter, in its various form, discerns;
    She parts the beamy light with skill profound,
    Metes the thin air, and weighs the flying sound;
    'Tis hers, the lightning from the clouds to call,
    And teach the fiery mischief where to fall.

      Yet more her volumes teach,--on these we look
    As abstracts drawn from Nature's larger book:
    Here, first described, the torpid earth appears,
    And next, the vegetable robe it wears;
    Where flowery tribes, in valleys, fields and groves,
    Nurse the still flame, and feed the silent loves;
    Loves, where no grief, nor joy, nor bliss, nor pain,
    Warm the glad heart or vex the labouring brain;
    But as the green blood moves along the blade,
    The bed of Flora on the branch is made;
    Where, without passion, love instinctive lives,
    And gives new life, unconscious that it gives.
    Advancing still in Nature's maze, we trace,
    In dens and burning plains, her savage race;
    With those tame tribes who on their lord attend,
    And find, in man, a master and a friend:
    Man crowns the scene, a world of wonders new,
    A moral world, that well demands our view.

      This world is here; for, of more lofty kind,
    These neighbouring volumes reason on the mind;
    They paint the state of man ere yet endued
    With knowledge;--man, poor, ignorant, and rude;
    Then, as his state improves, their pages swell,
    And all its cares, and all its comforts, tell:
    Here we behold how inexperience buys,
    At little price, the wisdom of the wise;
    Without the troubles of an active state,
    Without the cares and dangers of the great,
    Without the miseries of the poor, we know
    What wisdom, wealth, and poverty bestow;
    We see how reason calms the raging mind,
    And how contending passions urge mankind:
    Some, won by virtue, glow with sacred fire;
    Some, lured by vice, indulge the low desire;
    Whilst others, won by either, now pursue
    The guilty chase, now keep the good in view;
    For ever wretched, with themselves at strife,
    They lead a puzzled, vexed, uncertain life;
    For transient vice bequeaths a lingering pain
    Which transient virtue seeks to cure in vain.

      Whilst thus engaged, high views enlarge the soul,
    New interests draw, new principles control:
    Nor thus the soul alone resigns her grief,
    But here the tortured body finds relief;
    For see where yonder sage Arachnè shapes
    Her subtile gin, that not a fly escapes!
    There PHYSIC fills the space, and far around,
    Pile above pile, her learned works abound:
    Glorious their aim--to ease the labouring heart;
    To war with death, and stop his flying dart;
    To trace the source whence the fierce contest grew,
    And life's short lease on easier terms renew;
    To calm the frenzy of the burning brain;
    To heal the tortures of imploring pain;
    Or, when more powerful ills all efforts brave,
    To ease the victim no device can save,
    And smooth the stormy passage to the grave.

      But man, who knows no good unmixed and pure,
    Oft finds a poison where he sought a cure;
    For grave deceivers lodge their labours here,
    And cloud the science they pretend to clear:
    Scourges for sin, the solemn tribe are sent;
    Like fire and storms, they call us to repent;
    But storms subside, and fires forget to rage,
    _These_ are eternal scourges of the age:
    'Tis not enough that each terrific hand
    Spreads desolation round a guilty land;
    But, trained to ill, and hardened by its crimes,
    Their pen relentless kills through future times.

      Say ye, who search these records of the dead,
    Who read huge works, to boast what ye have read;
    Can all the real knowledge ye possess,
    Or those (if such there are) who more than guess,
    Atone for each impostor's wild mistakes,
    And mend the blunders pride or folly makes?

      What thought so wild, what airy dream so light,
    That will not prompt a theorist to write?
    What art so prevalent, what proof so strong,
    That will convince him his attempt is wrong?
    One in the solids finds each lurking ill,
    Nor grants the passive fluids power to kill;
    A learned friend some subtler reason brings,
    Absolves the channels, but condemns their springs;
    The subtile nerves, that shun the doctor's eye,
    Escape no more his subtler theory;
    The vital heat, that warms the labouring heart,
    Lends a fair system to these sons of art;
    The vital air, a pure and subtile stream,
    Serves a foundation for an airy scheme,
    Assists the doctor, and supports his dream.
    Some have their favourite ills, and each disease
    Is but a younger branch that kills from these:
    One to the gout contracts all human pain,
    He views it raging in the frantic brain;
    Finds it in fevers all his efforts mar,
    And sees it lurking in the cold catarrh:
    Bilious by some, by others nervous seen,
    Rage the fantastic demons of the spleen;
    And every symptom of the strange disease
    With every system of the sage agrees.

      Ye frigid tribe, on whom I wasted long
    The tedious hours, and ne'er indulged in song;
    Ye first seducers of my easy heart,
    Who promised knowledge ye could not impart;
    Ye dull deluders, truth's destructive foes;
    Ye sons of fiction, clad in stupid prose;
    Ye treacherous leaders, who, yourselves in doubt,
    Light up false fires, and send us far about;--
    Still may yon spider round your pages spin,
    Subtile and slow, her emblematic gin!
    Buried in dust and lost in silence, dwell,
    Most potent, grave, and reverend friends--farewell!

      Near these, and where the setting sun displays,
    Through the dim window, his departing rays,
    And gilds yon columns, there, on either side,
    The huge abridgements of the LAW abide;
    Fruitful as vice the dread correctors stand,
    And spread their guardian terrors round the land;
    Yet, as the best that human care can do,
    Is mixed with error, oft with evil too,
    Skilled in deceit, and practised to evade,
    Knaves stand secure, for whom these laws were made;
    And justice vainly each expedient tries,
    While art eludes it, or while power defies.
    'Ah! happy age,' the youthful poet sings,
    'When the free nations knew not laws nor kings;
    When all were blessed to share a common store,
    And none were proud of wealth, for none were poor;
    No wars nor tumults vexed each still domain,
    No thirst for empire, no desire of gain;
    No proud great man, nor one who would be great,
    Drove modest merit from its proper state;
    Nor into distant climes would avarice roam,
    To fetch delights for luxury at home:
    Bound by no ties which kept the soul in awe,
    They dwelt at liberty, and love was law!'

      'Mistaken youth! each nation first was rude,
    Each man a cheerless son of solitude,
    To whom no joys of social life were known,
    None felt a care that was not all his own;
    Or in some languid clime his abject soul
    Bowed to a little tyrant's stern control;
    A slave, with slaves his monarch's throne he raised,
    And in rude song his ruder idol praised;
    The meaner cares of life were all he knew;
    Bounded his pleasures, and his wishes few:
    But when by slow degrees the Arts arose,
    And Science wakened from her long repose;
    When Commerce, rising from the bed of ease,
    Ran round the land, and pointed to the seas;
    When Emulation, born with jealous eye,
    And Avarice, lent their spurs to industry;
    Then one by one the numerous laws were made
    Those to control, and these to succour trade;
    To curb the insolence of rude command,
    To snatch the victim from the usurer's hand;
    To awe the bold, to yield the wronged redress,
    And feed the poor with Luxury's excess.'

      Like some vast flood, unbounded, fierce, and strong,
    His nature leads ungoverned man along;
    Like mighty bulwarks made to stem that tide,
    The laws are formed and placed on every side:
    Whene'er it breaks the bounds by these decreed,
    New statutes rise, and stronger laws succeed;
    More and more gentle grows the dying stream,
    More and more strong the rising bulwarks seem;
    Till, like a miner working sure and slow,
    Luxury creeps on, and ruins all below;
    The basis sinks, the ample piles decay;
    The stately fabric shakes and falls away;
    Primeval want and ignorance come on,
    But freedom, that exalts the savage state, is gone.

      Next, HISTORY ranks;--there full in front she lies,
    And every nation her dread tale supplies;
    Yet History has her doubts, and every age
    With sceptic queries marks the passing page;
    Records of old nor later date are clear,
    Too distant those, and these are placed too near;
    There time conceals the objects from our view,
    Here our own passions and a writer's too:
    Yet, in these volumes, see how states arose!
    Guarded by virtue from surrounding foes;
    Their virtue lost, and of their triumphs vain,
    Lo! how they sunk to slavery again!
    Satiate with power, of fame and wealth possessed,
    A nation grows too glorious to be blessed;
    Conspicuous made, she stands the mark of all,
    And foes join foes to triumph in her fall.

      Thus speaks the page that paints ambition's race,
    The monarch's pride, his glory, his disgrace;
    The headlong course, that maddening heroes run,
    How soon triumphant, and how soon undone;
    How slaves, turned tyrants, offer crowns to sale,
    And each fallen nation's melancholy tale.

      Lo! where of late the Book of Martyrs stood,
    Old pious tracts, and Bibles bound in wood;
    There, such the taste of our degenerate age,
    Stand the profane delusions of the STAGE:
    Yet virtue owns the TRAGIC MUSE a friend,
    Fable her means, morality her end;
    For this she rules all passions in their turns;
    And now the bosom bleeds, and now it burns,
    Pity with weeping eye surveys her bowl,
    Her anger swells, her terror chills the soul;
    She makes the vile to virtue yield applause,
    And own her sceptre while they break her laws;
    For vice in others is abhorred of all,
    And villains triumph when the worthless fall.

      Not thus her sister COMEDY prevails,
    Who shoots at folly, for her arrow fails;
    Folly, by dulness armed, eludes the wound,
    And harmless sees the feathered shafts rebound;
    Unhurt she stands, applauds the archer's skill,
    Laughs at her malice, and is folly still.
    Yet well the Muse portrays in fancied scenes,
    What pride will stoop to, what profession means;
    How formal fools the farce of state applaud,
    How caution watches at the lips of fraud;
    The wordy variance of domestic life;
    The tyrant husband, the retorting wife;
    The snares for innocence, the lie of trade,
    And the smooth tongue's habitual masquerade.

      With her the virtues too obtain a place,
    Each gentle passion, each becoming grace;
    The social joy in life's securer road,
    Its easy pleasure, its substantial good;
    The happy thought that conscious virtue gives,
    And all that ought to live, and all that lives.

      But who are these? Methinks a noble mien
    And awful grandeur in their form are seen,
    Now in disgrace: what though by time is spread
    Polluting dust o'er every reverend head;
    What though beneath yon gilded tribe they lie,
    And dull observers pass insulting by:
    Forbid it shame, forbid it decent awe,
    What seems so grave, should no attention draw!
    Come, let us then with reverend step advance,
    And greet--the ancient worthies of ROMANCE.

      Hence, ye profane! I feel a former dread,
    A thousand visions float around my head:
    Hark! hollow blasts through empty courts resound,
    And shadowy forms with staring eyes stalk round;
    See! moats and bridges, walls and castles rise,
    Ghosts, fairies, demons, dance before our eyes;
    Lo! magic verse inscribed on golden gate,
    And bloody hand that beckons on to fate:--
    'And who art thou, thou little page, unfold?
    Say, doth thy lord my Claribel withhold?
    Go tell him straight, Sir Knight, thou must resign
    The captive queen;--for Claribel is mine.'
    Away he flies; and now for bloody deeds,
    Black suits of armour, masks, and foaming steeds;
    The giant falls; his recreant throat I seize,
    And from his corslet take the massy keys:--
    Dukes, lords, and knights in long procession move,
    Released from bondage with my virgin love:--
    She comes! she comes! in all the charms of youth,
    Unequalled love and unsuspected truth!

      Ah! happy he who thus, in magic themes,
    O'er worlds bewitched, in early rapture dreams,
    Where wild Enchantment waves her potent wand,
    And Fancy's beauties fill her fairy land;
    Where doubtful objects strange desires excite,
    And Fear and Ignorance afford delight.

      But lost, for ever lost, to me these joys,
    Which Reason scatters, and which Time destroys;
    Too dearly bought: maturer judgement calls
    My busied mind from tales and madrigals;
    My doughty giants all are slain or fled,
    And all my knights, blue, green, and yellow, dead!
    No more the midnight fairy tribe I view,
    All in the merry moonshine tippling dew;
    E'en the last lingering fiction of the brain,
    The church-yard ghost, is now at rest again;
    And all these wayward wanderings of my youth
    Fly Reason's power and shun the light of truth.

      With fiction then does real joy reside,
    And is our reason the delusive guide?
    Is it then right to dream the syrens sing?
    Or mount enraptured on the dragon's wing?
    No, 'tis the infant mind, to care unknown,
    That makes the imagined paradise its own;
    Soon as reflections in the bosom rise,
    Light slumbers vanish from the clouded eyes:
    The tear and smile, that once together rose,
    Are then divorced; the head and heart are foes.
    Enchantment bows to Wisdom's serious plan,
    And Pain and Prudence make and mar the man.

      While thus, of power and fancied empire vain,
    With various thoughts my mind I entertain;
    While books my slaves, with tyrant hand I seize,
    Pleased with the pride that will not let them please;
    Sudden I find terrific thoughts arise,
    And sympathetic sorrow fills my eyes;
    For, lo! while yet my heart admits the wound,
    I see the CRITIC army ranged around.

      Foes to our race! if ever ye have known
    A father's fears for offspring of your own;--
    If ever, smiling o'er a lucky line,
    Ye thought the sudden sentiment divine,
    Then paused and doubted, and then, tired of doubt,
    With rage as sudden dashed the stanza out;--
    If, after fearing much and pausing long,
    Ye ventured on the world your laboured song,
    And from the crusty critics of those days
    Implored the feeble tribute of their praise;
    Remember now the fears that moved you then,
    And, spite of truth, let mercy guide your pen.

      What venturous race are ours! what mighty foes
    Lie waiting all around them to oppose!
    What treacherous friends betray them to the fight!
    What dangers threaten them!--yet still they write:
    A hapless tribe! to every evil born,
    Whom villains hate, and fools affect to scorn:
    Strangers they come, amid a world of woe,
    And taste the largest portion ere they go.

      Pensive I spoke, and cast mine eyes around;
    The roof, methought, returned a solemn sound;
    Each column seemed to shake, and clouds like smoke,
    From dusty piles and ancient volumes broke;
    Gathering above, like mists condensed they seem,
    Exhaled in summer from the rushy stream;
    Like flowing robes they now appear, and twine
    Round the large members of a form divine;
    His silver beard, that swept his aged breast,
    His piercing eye, that inward light expressed,
    Were seen,--but clouds and darkness veiled the rest.
    Fear chilled my heart: to one of mortal race,
    How awful seemed the Genius of the place!
    So in Cimmerian shores, Ulysses saw
    His parent-shade, and shrunk in pious awe;
    Like him I stood, and wrapt in thought profound,
    When from the pitying power broke forth a solemn sound:--

      'Care lives with all; no rules, no precepts save
    The wise from woe, no fortitude the brave;
    Grief is to man as certain as the grave:
    Tempests and storms in life's whole progress rise,
    And hope shines dimly through o'erclouded skies;
    Some drops of comfort on the favoured fall,
    But showers of sorrow are the lot of _all_:
    Partial to talents, then, shall Heaven withdraw
    The afflicting rod, or break the general law?
    Shall he who soars, inspired by loftier views,
    Life's little cares and little pains refuse?
    Shall he not rather feel a double share
    Of mortal woe, when doubly armed to bear?

      'Hard is his fate who builds his peace of mind
    On the precarious mercy of mankind;
    Who hopes for wild and visionary things,
    And mounts o'er unknown seas with venturous wings:
    But as, of various evils that befall
    The human race, some portion goes to all;
    To him perhaps the milder lot's assigned,
    Who feels his consolation in his mind;
    And, locked within his bosom, bears about
    A mental charm for every care without.
    E'en in the pangs of each domestic grief,
    Or health or vigorous hope affords relief;
    And every wound the tortured bosom feels,
    Or virtue bears, or some preserver heals;
    Some generous friend, of ample power possessed;
    Some feeling heart, that bleeds for the distressed;
    Some breast that glows with virtues all divine;
    Some noble RUTLAND, Misery's friend and thine.

      'Nor say, the Muse's song, the Poet's pen,
    Merit the scorn they meet from little men.
    With cautious freedom if the numbers flow,
    Not wildly high, nor pitifully low;
    If vice alone their honest aims oppose,
    Why so ashamed their friends, so loud their foes?
    Happy for men in every age and clime,
    If all the sons of vision dealt in rhyme.
    Go on then, Son of Vision! still pursue
    Thy airy dreams; the world is dreaming too.
    Ambition's lofty views, the pomp of state,
    The pride of wealth, the splendour of the great,
    Stripped of their mask, their cares and troubles known,
    Are visions far less happy than thy own:
    Go on! and, while the sons of care complain,
    Be wisely gay and innocently vain;
    While serious souls are by their fears undone,
    Blow sportive bladders in the beamy sun,
    And call them worlds! and bid the greatest show
    More radiant colours in their worlds below:
    Then, as they break, the slaves of care reprove,
    And tell them, Such are all the toys they love.'

                            G. CRABBE.


THE LIBRARY

    Here, e'en the sturdy democrat may find,
    Nor scorn their rank, the nobles of the mind;
    While kings may learn, nor blush at being shown
    How Learning's patents abrogate their own.
    A goodly company and fair to see;
    Royal plebeians; earls of low degree;
    Beggars whose wealth enriches every clime;
    Princes who scarce can boast a mental dime;
    Crowd here together like the quaint array
    Of jostling neighbours on a market day.
    Homer and Milton,--can we call them blind?--
    Of godlike sight, the vision of the mind;
    Shakespeare, who calmly looked creation through,
    'Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new';
    Plato the sage, so thoughtful and serene,
    He seems a prophet by his heavenly mien;
    Shrewd Socrates, whose philosophic power
    Xantippe proved in many a trying hour;
    And Aristophanes, whose humour run
    In vain endeavour to be-'cloud' the sun;
    Majestic Aeschylus, whose glowing page
    Holds half the grandeur of the Athenian stage;
    Pindar, whose odes, replete with heavenly fire,
    Proclaim the master of the Grecian lyre;
    Anacreon, famed for many a luscious line,
    Devote to Venus and the god of wine.
    I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt
    If one be better with them or without--
    Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
    Knows the high art of what and how to read.
    At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
    But 'tis a nobler privilege to think;
    And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
    May make the nectar which it cannot find.
    'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
    'Tis wise to learn; 'tis godlike to create!

                         J. G. SAXE.


OF LIBRARIES: THE BODLEIAN

What oweth Oxford, nay this Isle, to the most worthy Bodley, whose
Library, perhaps, containeth more excellent books than the ancients by
all their curious search could find?... To such a worthy work all the
lovers of learning should conspire and contribute; and of small
beginnings who is ignorant what great effects may follow? If, perhaps,
we will consider the beginnings of the greatest libraries of Europe (as
Democritus said of the world, that it was made up of atoms), we shall
find them but small; for how great soever in their present perfection
they are now, these Carthages were once Magalia. Libraries are as
forests, in which not only tall cedars and oaks are to be found, but
bushes too and dwarfish shrubs; and as in apothecaries' shops all sorts
of drugs are permitted to be, so may all sorts of books be in a library.
And as they out of vipers and scorpions, and poisoning vegetables,
extract often wholesome medicaments, for the life of mankind; so out of
whatsoever book, good instructions and examples may be
acquired.--WILLIAM DRUMMOND. _Of Libraries._


ON THE DEATH OF SIR THOMAS BODLEY

    One Homer was enough to blazon forth
      In a full lofty style Ulysses' praise,
    Caesar had Lucan to enrol his worth
    Unto the memory of endless days.
      Of thy deeds, Bodley, from thine own pure spring
      A thousand Homers and sweet Lucans sing.
    One volume was a monument to bound
    The large extent of their deserving pains,
    In learning's commonwealth was never found
    So large a decade to express thy strains,
      Which who desires to character aright,
      Must read more books than they had lines to write.
    Yet give this little river leave to run,
    Into the boundless ocean of thy fame;
    Had they first ended I had not begun,
    Sith each is a Protogenes to frame
      So curiously the picture of thy worth
      That when all's done, art wants to set it forth.

                    PETER PRIDEAUX (Exeter College, 1613).


TO BE CHAINED WITH GOOD AUTHORS

King James, 1605, when he came to see our University of Oxford, and
amongst other edifices now went to view that famous library, renewed by
Sir Thomas Bodley in imitation of Alexander at his departure, brake out
into that noble speech, 'If I were not a king, I would be a University
man: and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my
wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library, and to
be chained together with so many good authors, _et mortuis magistris_.'
So sweet is the delight of study, the more learning they have (as he
that hath a dropsy, the more he drinks the thirstier he is) the more
they covet to learn, and the last day is _prioris discipulus_; harsh at
first learning is, _radices amarae_, but _fructus dulces_, according to
that of Isocrates, pleasant at last; the longer they live, the more they
are enamoured with the Muses. Heinsius, the keeper of the library at
Leyden, in Holland, was mewed up in it all the year long; and that which
to thy thinking should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater
liking. 'I no sooner (saith he) come into the library, but I bolt the
door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose
nurse is Idleness, the mother of Ignorance, and Melancholy herself, and
in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my
seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great
ones, and rich men that know not this happiness.'

I am not ignorant in the meantime (notwithstanding this which I have
said) how barbarously and basely, for the most part, our ruder gentry
esteem of libraries and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a
treasure, so inestimable a benefit, as Aesop's cock did the jewel he
found in the dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of
education.--R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._


AN ODE ADDRESSED TO MR. JOHN ROUSE

LIBRARIAN, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

On a lost volume of my poems, which he desired me to replace, that he
might add them to my other works deposited in the library.

             _Strophe._

    My two-fold book! single in show,
          But double in contents,
    Neat, but not curiously adorned,
      Which, in his early youth,
    A poet gave, no lofty one in truth,
    Although an earnest wooer of the Muse--
    Say while in cool Ausonian shades
      Or British wilds he roamed,
    Striking by turns his native lyre,
      By turns the Daunian lute,
      And stepped almost in air,--

              _Antistrophe._

    Say, little book, what furtive hand
    Thee from thy fellow-books conveyed,
    What time, at the repeated suit
        Of my most learnèd friend,
    I sent thee forth, an honoured traveller,
    From our great city to the source of Thames,
        Caerulian sire!
    Where rise the fountains, and the raptures ring,
        Of the Aonian choir,
      Durable as yonder spheres,
      And through the endless lapse of years
        Secure to be admired?

                _Strophe II._

      Now what God, or Demigod
    For Britain's ancient Genius moved,
        (If our afflicted land
    Have expiated at length the guilty sloth
      Of her degenerate sons)
      Shall terminate our impious feuds,
    And discipline, with hallowed voice, recall?
      Recall the Muses too,
      Driven from their ancient seats
    In Albion, and well nigh from Albion's shore,
      And with keen Phoebean shafts,
      Piercing the unseemly birds,
        Whose talons menace us,
    Shall drive the Harpy race from Helicon afar?

                _Antistrophe._

    But thou, my book, though thou hast strayed,
        Whether by treachery lost
    Or indolent neglect, thy bearer's fault,
        From all thy kindred books,
    To some dark cell or cave forlorn,
      Where thou endurest, perhaps
    The chafing of some hard untutored hand,
        Be comforted--
    For lo! again the splendid hope appears
      That thou mayest yet escape,
    The gulfs of Lethe, and on oary wings
    Mount to the everlasting courts of Jove!

                _Strophe III._

    Since Rouse desires thee, and complains
      That, though by promise his,
      Thou yet appear'st not in thy place
    Among the literary noble stores,
        Given to his care,
    But, absent, leavest his numbers incomplete:
      He, therefore, guardian vigilant
      Of that unperishing wealth,
    Calls thee to the interior shrine, his charge,
    Where he intends a richer treasure far
    Than Iön kept (Iön, Erectheus' son
    Illustrious, of the fair Creüsa born)
    In the resplendent temple of his God,
    Tripods of gold, and Delphic gifts divine.

                 _Antistrophe._

      Haste, then, to the pleasant groves,
        The Muses' favourite haunt;
    Resume thy station in Apollo's dome,
            Dearer to him
    Than Delos, or the forked Parnassian hill!
            Exulting go,
    Since now a splendid lot is also thine,
    And thou art sought by my propitious friend;
        For there thou shalt be read
        With authors of exalted note,
    The ancient glorious lights of Greece and Rome.

                 _Epode._

    Ye, then, my works, no longer vain,
        And worthless deemed by me!
    Whate'er this sterile genius has produced
    Expect, at last, the rage of envy spent,
        An unmolested happy home,
    Gift of kind Hermes, and my watchful friend,
        Where never flippant tongue profane
          Shall entrance find,
    And whence the coarse unlettered multitude
          Shall babble far remote.
        Perhaps some future distant age,
    Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught,
            Shall furnish minds of power
            To judge more equally.
        Then, malice silenced in the tomb,
            Cooler heads and sounder hearts,
            Thanks to Rouse, if aught of praise
    I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim.

                 W. COWPER. _Translated from Milton._


PINDARIC ODE

    Hail! Learning's Pantheon! Hail, the sacred Ark,
    Where all the world of science does embark!
    Which ever shall withstand, and hast so long withstood,
    Insatiate time's devouring flood!
    Hail, Tree of Knowledge! thy leaves fruit! which well
    Dost in the midst of Paradise arise,
      Oxford, the Muses' Paradise!
    From which may never Sword the blest expel.
    Hail, Bank of all past ages, where they lie
    To enrich with interest posterity!
      Hail, Wit's illustrious Galaxy,
    Where thousand lights into one brightness spread,
    Hail, living University of the Dead!

    Unconfused Babel of all Tongues, which e'er
    The mighty linguist, Fame, or Time, the mighty traveller,
    That could speak or this could hear!
    Majestic Monument and Pyramid,
    Where still the shapes of parted souls abide
    Embalmed in verse! exalted souls, which now,
    Enjoy those Arts they wooed so well below!
    Which now all wonders printed plainly see
      That have been, are, or are to be,
      In the mysterious Library,
    The Beatific Bodley of the Dead!

    Will ye into your sacred throng admit
      The meanest British wit?
    Ye General Council of the Priests of Fame,
    Will ye not murmur and disdain
      That I a place amongst ye claim
      The humblest Deacon of her train?
    Will ye allow me the honourable chain?
      The chain of ornament, which here
      Your noble prisoners proudly wear?
    A chain which will more pleasant seem to me
    Than all my own Pindaric liberty.
    Will ye to bind me with these mighty names submit
      Like an Apocrypha with Holy Writ?
    Whatever happy Book is chainèd here,
    No other place or people needs to fear;
    His chain's a passport to go everywhere.

      As when a seat in Heaven
    Is to an unmalicious sinner given,
      Who casting round his wondering Eye
    Does none but Patriarchs and Apostles there espy,
      Martyrs who did their lives bestow
      And Saints who Martyrs lived below,
    With trembling and amazement he begins
    To recollect his frailties past and sins,
      He doubts almost his station there,
    His soul says to itself, 'How came I here?'
      It fares no otherwise with me
    When I myself with conscious wonder see
    Amidst this purified elected company;
      With hardship they and pain
      Did to their happiness attain.
    No labours I or merits can pretend;
    I think, Predestination only was my friend.

    Ah! if my author had been tied like me,
    To such a place and such a company,
    Instead of several countries, several men,
      And business, which the Muses hate!
    He might have then improved that small estate
    Which Nature sparingly did to him give,
      He might perhaps have thriven then,
    And settled upon me, his child, somewhat to live;
    It had happier been for him, as well as me.
      For when all, alas, is done,
    We Books, I mean you Books, will prove to be
    The best and noblest conversation.
      For though some errors will get in,
      Like tinctures of original sin,
      Yet sure we from our Father's wit
      Draw all the strength and spirits of it,
    Leaving the grosser parts for conversation,
    As the best blood of man's employed on generation.

                           A. COWLEY.


ON SIR THOMAS BODLEY'S LIBRARY, THE AUTHOR BEING THEN IN OXFORD

    Boast not, proud Golgotha, that thou canst show
    The ruins of mankind and let us know
    How frail a thing is flesh! though we see there
    But empty skulls, the Rabbins still live here.
    They are not dead, but full of blood again,
    I mean the sense, and every line a vein.
    Triumph not o'er their dust; whoever looks
    In here, shall find their brains all in their books.
      Nor is't old Palestine alone survives,
    Athens lives here, more than in Plutarch's Lives.
    The stones which sometimes danced unto the strain
    Of Orpheus, here do lodge his muse again.
    And you the Roman spirits, Learning has
    Made your lives longer than your empire was.
    Caesar had perished from the world of men,
    Had not his sword been rescued by his pen.
    Rare Seneca! how lasting is thy breath!
    Though Nero did, thou could'st not bleed to death.
    How dull the expert tyrant was, to look
    For that in thee, which livèd in thy book!
    Afflictions turn our blood to ink, and we
    Commence, when writing, our eternity.
    Lucilius here I can behold, and see
    His counsels and his life proceed from thee.
    But what care I to whom thy Letters be?
    I change the name, and thou dost write to me;
    And in this age, as sad almost as thine,
    Thy stately Consolations are mine.
    Poor earth! what though thy viler dust enrolls
    The frail enclosures of these mighty souls?
    Their graves are all upon record; not one
    But is as bright and open as the sun,
    And though some part of them obscurely fell
    And perished in an unknown, private cell,
    Yet in their books they found a glorious way
    To live unto the Resurrection-day!
    Most noble Bodley! we are bound to thee
    For no small part of our eternity.
    Thy treasure was not spent on horse and hound,
    Nor that new mode, which doth old States confound.
    Thy legacies another way did go,
    Nor were they left to those would spend them so.
    Thy safe, discreet expense on us did flow;
    Walsam is in the midst of Oxford now.
    Thou hast made us all thine heirs; whatever we
    Hereafter write, 'tis thy posterity.
    This is thy monument! here thou shalt stand
    Till the times fail in their last grain of sand.
    And wheresoe'er thy silent relics keep,
    This tomb will never let thine honour sleep.
    Still we shall think upon thee; all our fame
    Meets here to speak one letter of thy name.
    Thou canst not die! Here thou art more than safe,
    Where every book is thy large epitaph.

                        H. VAUGHAN.


THE BODLEIANS OF OXFORD

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me,
are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves--

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the
souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these
Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I
do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I
could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid
their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is
fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid
the happy orchard.--C. LAMB. _Oxford in the Vacation._


THE BODLEIAN: A DEAD SEA OF BOOKS

Few places affected me more than the Libraries, and especially the
Bodleian Library, reputed to have half a million printed books and
manuscripts. I walked solemnly and reverently among the alcoves and
through the halls, as if in the pyramid of embalmed souls. It was their
life, their heart, their mind, that they treasured in these book-urns.
Silent as they are, should all the emotions that went to their creation
have utterance, could the world itself contain the various sound? They
longed for fame? Here it is--to stand silently for ages, moved only to
be dusted and catalogued, valued only as units in the ambitious total,
and gazed at, occasionally, by men as ignorant as I am, of their name,
their place, their language, and their worth. Indeed, unless a man can
link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that
they shall draw from them as from wells, there is no more immortality to
the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and the bones.
A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows.

Yet one is impressed with the thought, the labour, and the struggle,
represented in this vast catacomb of books. Who could dream, by the
placid waters that issue from the level mouths of brooks into the lake,
all the plunges, the whirls, the divisions, and foaming rushes that had
brought them down to the tranquil exit? And who can guess through what
channels of disturbance, and experiences of sorrow, the heart passed
that has emptied into this Dead Sea of books?--HENRY WARD BEECHER. _Star
Papers._


A COLLEGE LIBRARY

    A churchyard with a cloister running round
    And quaint old effigies in act of prayer,
    And painted banners mouldering strangely there
    Where mitred prelates and grave doctors sleep,
    Memorials of a consecrated ground!
    Such is this antique room, a haunted place
    Where dead men's spirits come, and angels keep
    Long hours of watch with wings in silence furled.
    Early and late have I kept vigil here;
    And I have seen the moonlight shadows trace
    Dim glories on the missal's blue and gold,
    The work of my scholastic sires, that told
    Of quiet ages men call dark and drear,
    For Faith's soft light is darkness to the world.

                               F. W. FABER.


MERTON LIBRARY

    Quaint gloomy chamber, oldest relic left
    Of monkish quiet, like a ship thy form,
    Stranded keel upward by some sudden storm;
    Now that a safe and polished age hath cleft
    Locks, bars and chains, that saved thy tomes from theft,
    May Time, a surer robber, spare thine age,
    And reverence each huge black-lettered page,
    Of real boards and gilt-stamped leather reft.
    Long may ambitious students here unseal
    The secret mysteries of classic lore;
    Though urged not by that blind and aimless zeal
    With which the Scot within these walls of yore
    Transcribed the Bible without breaking fast,
    Toiled through each word and perished at the last.

                            J. B. NORTON.


OXFORD NIGHTS

    About the august and ancient _Square_,
    Cries the wild wind; and through the air,
    The blue night air, blows keen and chill:
    Else, all the night sleeps, all is still.
    Now, the lone _Square_ is blind with gloom:
    Now, on that clustering chestnut bloom,
    A cloudy moonlight plays, and falls
    In glory upon _Bodley's_ walls:
    Now, wildlier yet, while moonlight pales,
    Storm the tumultuary gales.
    O rare divinity of Night!
    Season of undisturbed delight:
    Glad interspace of day and day!
    Without, a world of winds at play:
    Within, I hear what dead friends say.
    Blow, winds! and round that perfect _Dome_,
    Wail as you will, and sweep, and roam:
    Above _Saint Mary's_ carven home,
    Struggle, and smite to your desire
    The sainted watchers on her spire:
    Or in the distance vex your power
    Upon mine own _New College_ tower:
    You hurt not these! On me and mine,
    Clear candlelights in quiet shine:
    My fire lives yet! nor have I done
    With _Smollett_, nor with _Richardson_:
    With, gentlest of the martyrs! _Lamb_,
    Whose lover I, long lover, am:
    With _Gray_, whose gracious spirit knew
    The sorrows of art's lonely few:
    With _Fielding_, great, and strong, and tall;
    _Sterne_, exquisite, equivocal;
    _Goldsmith_, the dearest of them all:
    While _Addison's_ demure delights
    Turn _Oxford_, into _Attic_, nights.
    Still _Trim_ and _Parson Adams_ keep
    Me better company, than sleep:
    Dark sleep, who loves not me; nor I
    Love well her nightly death to die,
    And in her haunted chapels lie.
    Sleep wins me not: but from his shelf
    Brings me each wit his very self:
    Beside my chair the great ghosts throng,
    Each tells his story, sings his song:
    And in the ruddy fire I trace
    The curves of each _Augustan_ face.
    I sit at _Doctor Primrose'_ board:
    I hear _Beau Tibbs_ discuss a lord.
    Mine, _Matthew Bramble's_ pleasant wrath;
    Mine, all the humours of the _Bath_.
    _Sir Roger_ and the _Man in Black_
    Bring me the _Golden Ages_ back.
    Now white _Clarissa_ meets her fate,
    With virgin will inviolate:
    Now _Lovelace_ wins me with a smile,
    _Lovelace_, adorable and vile.
    I taste, in slow alternate way,
    Letters of _Lamb_, letters of _Gray_:
    Nor lives there, beneath Oxford towers,
    More joy, than in my silent hours.
    Dream, who love dreams! forget all grief:
    Find, in sleep's nothingness, relief:
    Better my dreams! Dear, human books,
    With kindly voices, winning looks!
    Enchaunt me with your spells of art,
    And draw me homeward to your heart:
    Till weariness and things unkind
    Seem but a vain and passing wind:
    Till the grey morning slowly creep
    Upward, and rouse the birds from sleep:
    Till _Oxford_ bells the silence break,
    And find me happier, for your sake.
    Then, with the dawn of common day,
    Rest you! But I, upon my way,
    What the fates bring, will cheerlier do,
    In days not yours, through thoughts of you!

                         L. JOHNSON.


ON THE LIBRARY AT CAMBRIDGE

    In that great maze of books I sighed, and said,--
      'It is a grave-yard, and each tome a tomb;
    Shrouded in hempen rags, behold the dead,
      Coffined and ranged in crypts of dismal gloom,--
    Food for the worm and redolent of mould,
    Traced with brief epitaph in tarnished gold.'--
      Ah, golden-lettered hope!--Ah, dolorous doom!
    Yet, mid the common death, when all is cold,
      And mildewed pride in desolation dwells,
    A few great Immortalities of old
      Stand brightly forth;--not tombs but living shrines,
    Where from high saint or martyr virtue wells,
    Which on the living yet works miracles,
      Spreading a relic wealth, richer than golden mines.

                                       J. M.


THE SOUL'S VIATICUM

Books looked on as to their readers or authors do at the very first
mention challenge pre-eminence above the world's admired fine things.
Books are the glass of council to dress ourselves by. They are life's
best business: vocation to these hath more emolument coming in than all
the other busy terms of life. They are fee-less councillors, no delaying
patrons, of easy access, and kind expedition, never sending away empty
any client or petitioner. They are for company the best friends; in
doubts, counsellors; in damp, comforters; Time's perspective; the home
traveller's ship, or horse, the busy man's best recreation; the opiate
of idle weariness; the mind's best ordinary; Nature's garden and
seed-plot of Immortality. Time spent, needlessly, from them is consumed,
but with them twice gained. Time captivated and snatched from thee by
incursions of business, thefts of visitants, or by thy own carelessness
lost, is by these redeemed in life; they are the soul's viaticum; and
against death its cordial. In a true verdict, no such treasure as a
library.--B. WHITELOCKE.




NOTES


PAGE 1. _Lamb._--The extracts from the works of Charles Lamb are from
the Oxford edition, edited by T. Hutchinson. Not content with 'grace'
before Milton and Shakespeare, Lamb suggests elsewhere (see p. 130)
a solemn service.

P. 1. _Petrarch._--When the love-sick Petrarch retired from Avignon to
Vaucluse, in 1338, his only companions were his books; for his friends
rarely visited him, alleging that his mode of life was unnatural.
Petrarch replied as in the text, which is quoted from Mrs. S. Dodson's
_Life_. On another occasion, however, Petrarch wrote: 'Many have found
the multitude of their books a hindrance to learning, and abundance has
bred want, as sometimes happens. But if the many books are at hand, they
are not to be cast aside, but to be gleaned, and the best used; and care
should be taken that those which might have proved seasonable
auxiliaries do not become hindrances out of season.' See Leigh Hunt's
reference on page 20 to Petrarch as 'the god of the Bibliomaniacs'.

P. 2. _Waller._--Carlyle, aged 22, wrote to Robert Mitchell that,
lacking society, he found 'books are a ready and effectual resource'.
'It is lawful,' he added, 'for the solitary wight to express the love he
feels for those companions so steadfast and unpresuming--that go or come
without reluctance, and that, when his fellow-animals are proud or
stupid or peevish, are ever ready to cheer the languor of his soul, and
gild the barrenness of life with the treasures of bygone times.'

Walter Pater, in _Appreciations: Style_, observes that 'different
classes of persons, at different times, make, of course, very various
demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not only
scholars but all disinterested lovers of books, will always look to it,
as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from
a certain vulgarity in the actual world. A perfect poem like _Lycidas_,
a perfect fiction like _Esmond_, the perfect handling of a theory like
Newman's _Idea of a University_, has for them something of the uses of a
religious "retreat".'

P. 4. _Chesterfield._--Folio, a book whose sheets are folded into two
leaves; quarto, sheets folded into four leaves, abbreviated into 4to;
octavo, sheets folded into eight leaves, 8vo; duodecimo, sheets folded
into twelve leaves, 12mo. The first three words come to us from the
Italian, through the French; the last is from the Latin _duodecim_.

P. 4. _Southey._--

    Better than men and women, friend,
      That are dust, though dear in our joy and pain,
    Are the books their cunning hands have penned,
      For they depart, but the books remain....
    When others fail him, the wise man looks
    To the sure companionship of books.--R. H. STODDARD.

P. 5. _Southey_ ('A heavenly delight').--See p. 320.

P. 5. _Southey_ ('The best of all possible company').--Castanheda died
in 1559, Barros in 1570, Osorio (da Fonseca) in 1580. They were
Portuguese historians.

P. 6. _Emerson._

    There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
    Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.--J. R. LOWELL.

P. 7. _Whittier._--The poet explains that the 'lettered magnate' was his
friend Fields (James Thomas, 1817-81), who edited the _Atlantic
Monthly_. Among Fields's friends were Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Miss
Mitford, and Dickens. Longfellow's 'Auf Wiedersehen' was written 'in
memory of J. T. F.', and Whittier himself wrote some elegiac verse after
his death.

It may be noted that Elzevir was the name of a famous family of Dutch
printers, whose books were chiefly issued between 1592 and 1681. Louis
Elzevir (? 1540-1617) was the first to make the name famous.

P. 9. _Roscoe._--The sale of Roscoe's library, necessary on account of
financial failure, took place in August and September 1816. This Roscoe
is the historian of the Medici.

Washington Irving quotes Roscoe's sonnet in his reference to the
incident.

P. 10. _Longfellow._--These valedictory lines were written in December
1881. In the following year Longfellow died.

P. 10. _Jonson._--Goodyer or Goodier (spelt Goodyere by Herrick) was the
friend of Donne and of many other literary men, and he wrote verses on
his own account. His father, Sir Henry Goodyer, was the patron of
Michael Drayton.

P. 11. _Sheridan._--Written to Dean Swift, then in London.

P. 12. _Tupper._--'Next to possessing a true, wise, and victorious
friend seated by your fireside, it is blessed to have the spirit of such
a friend embodied--for spirit can assume any embodiment--on your
bookshelves. But in the latter case the friendship is all on one side.
For full friendship your friend must love you, and know that you love
him.'--GEORGE MACDONALD.

Compare C. S. C.'s parody on page 135; and Goethe's statement that he
only hated parodies 'because they lower the beautiful, noble, and great'.

P. 13. _de Bury._--Richard de Bury was born near Bury St. Edmunds in
1287, his father being Sir Richard Aungervile. He had a distinguished
career at Oxford, and was the tutor of Edward III. Sent as ambassador to
the papal court at Avignon, he formed a friendship with Petrarch (see
pp. 1 and 369). While Bishop of Durham, he was for a short time Lord
Chancellor and also Treasurer of England. He finished the _Philobiblon_
less than three months before he died, in 1345. Thomas Fuller says that
he had more books than all the other English bishops in that age put
together. He had a library at each of his residences, and Mr. E. C.
Thomas tells us, on the authority of William de Chambre, that wherever
he was residing so many books lay about his bedchamber that it was
hardly possible to stand or move without treading upon them. All the
time he could spare from business was devoted either to religious
offices or to books, and daily at table he would have a book read to
him. The _Philobiblon_ was printed first at Cologne in 1473, then ten
years later at Spires, and in 1500 at Paris. The first edition printed
in England appeared in 1598, and it was a product of the Oxford Press.
It was not until 1832 that any English translation was published. This,
although the name was not divulged in the book, was the work of John
Bellingham Inglis. More than half a century passed before another
translation was made--that of Mr. Thomas, who personally examined or
collated twenty-eight MSS. Inglis's translation, according to his
successor, is a work of more spirit than accuracy, but it is the spirit
that quickeneth, and it is the 1832 volume which I have used.

P. 14. _Addison._--Ovid, _Met._ xv. 871:

    --which nor dreads the rage
    Of tempests, fire, or war, or wasting age.--WELSTED.

Fielding says in _Tom Jones_:--'I question not but the ingenious author
of the _Spectator_ was principally induced to prefix Greek and Latin
mottoes to every paper, from the same consideration of guarding against
the pursuit of those scribblers who, having no talents of a writer but
what is taught by the writing-master, are yet not more afraid nor
ashamed to assume the same titles with the greatest genius, than their
good brother in the fable was of braying in the lion's skin. By the
device, therefore, of his motto, it became impracticable for any man to
presume to imitate the _Spectators_, without understanding at least one
sentence in the learned languages.'

'No praise of Addison's style,' Lord Lytton declares, 'can exaggerate
its merits. Its art is perfectly marvellous. No change of time can
render the workmanship obsolete. His manner has that nameless urbanity
in which we recognize the perfection of manner--courteous, but not
courtier-like; so dignified, yet so kindly; so easy, yet so high-bred.
Its form of English is fixed--a safe and eternal model, of which all
imitation pleases--to which all approach is scholarship--like the Latin
of the Augustan age.'

So much for style. For the rest Hazlitt remarks that 'it is the
extremely moral and didactic tone of the _Spectator_ which makes us apt
to think of Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as "a parson in
a tie-wig"'. How often history repeats itself.

P. 15. _Dodd._--His _Beauties of Shakespeare_, published in 1752, is
still well known. Dodd was hanged for forgery, despite many efforts,
including those of Dr. Johnson, on his behalf.

P. 16. _Hunt._--The periods referred to by Leigh Hunt are 'the dark
ages, as they are called', and 'the gay town days of Charles II, or a
little afterwards'. In the first the essayist imagines 'an age of iron
warfare and energy, with solitary retreats, in which the monk or the
hooded scholar walks forth to meditate, his precious volume under his
arm. In the other, I have a triumphant example of the power of books and
wit to contest the victory with sensual pleasure:--Rochester staggering
home to pen a satire in the style of Monsieur Boileau; Butler, cramming
his jolly duodecimo with all the learning that he laughed at; and a new
race of book poets come up, who, in spite of their periwigs and
petit-maîtres, talk as romantically of "the bays" as if they were
priests of Delphos.'

In Chapman's translation of Homer occur the words: 'The fortresses of
thorniest queaches.' A queach is a thick bushy plot, or a quickset
hedge.

    You will see Hunt--one of those happy souls
    Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
    This world would smell like what it is--a tomb.

                 SHELLEY. _Letter to Maria Gisborne._

P. 17. _Lamb._--

              What youth was in thy years,
    What wisdom in thy levity, what truth
    In every utterance of that purest soul!
    Few are the spirits of the glorified

                         W. S. LANDOR.

    Encumbered dearly with old books,
    Thou, by the pleasant chimney nooks,
    Didst laugh, with merry-meaning looks,
        Thy griefs away.--LIONEL JOHNSON.

P. 18. _Burton._--Compare the remark of the 'Hammock School' reviewers
in Mr. G. K. Chesterton's _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_--'Next to
authentic goodness in a book (and that, alas! we never find) we desire a
rich badness.'

P. 19. _Channing._--An address introductory to the Franklin lectures
delivered at Boston, 1838. Channing's influence increased after his
death, which occurred in 1842. In the seventies nearly 50,000 copies of
his _Complete Works_ were circulated in America and Europe.

P. 20. _Hunt._--The novel _Camilla_ is Madame D'Arblay's; the entire
passage relating to the Oxford scholar's books is given on page 216.
Petrarch is quoted on pages 1 and 369.

P. 21. _Landor._--See 'Old-Fashioned Verse' on p. 186.

P. 26. _Burton._--Lord Byron is reported by Moore to have said: 'The
book, in my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the
reputation of being well read, with the least trouble, is Burton's
_Anatomy of Melancholy_, the most amusing and instructive medley of
quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial
reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If,
however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more
improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty
other works with which I am acquainted, at least in the English
language.'

Dr. Johnson, while admitting that the _Anatomy_ is a valuable work,
suggests that it is overloaded with quotation. But he adds, 'It is the
only book that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I wished to
rise.'

P. 28. _Southey._--'Southey's appearance is _Epic_; and he is the only
existing entire man of letters. All the others have some pursuit annexed
to their authorship'.--LORD BYRON.

              Ye, loved books, no more
    Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,
    To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown,
    Adding immortal labours of his own.--WORDSWORTH.
         (Inscription for a monument in Crosthwaite Church).

P. 32. _Montaigne._--Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, began to
write his essays in his château at Montaigne in Périgord in 1572, at the
age of thirty-nine. The essays were published in 1580, and five editions
had appeared before his death in 1592.

_The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne_ translated by John Florio
were first published in 1603. The translator was born in London about
1553, and he died in 1625. It is this translation from which my excerpts
are given, and it is the only book known to have been in Shakespeare's
library; the volume contains his autograph, and is now in the British
Museum.

Emerson classes Montaigne in his _Representative Men_ as the Sceptic. He
calls to mind that Gibbon reckoned, in the bigoted times of the period,
but two men of liberality in France--Henry IV and Montaigne--and adds,
'Though a Biblical plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical levity,
may shut his pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence is
superficial.... I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It
is the language of conversation transferred to a book.'

P. 33. _Denham._--Dominico Mancini wrote the _Libellus de quattuor
Virtutibus_, published in Paris, 1484.

P. 37. _Johnson._--The excerpts from Johnson and from Boswell's _Life_
are taken, where possible, from Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Oxford edition.

P. 41. _Rabelais._--The translation is that of Peter Anthony Motteux
(1660-1718) and of Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611-1660).

It may be remembered that Pantagruel on his travels found in Paris 'the
library of St. Victor, a very stately and magnificent one, especially in
some books which were there', of which the Repertory or Catalogue is
given. A few of the titles are:--_The Pomegranate of Vice_, _The Henbane
of the Bishops_, _The Crucible of Contemplation_, _The Flimflams of the
Law_, _The Pleasures of the Monachal Life_, _Sixty-nine fat Breviaries_,
and _The Chimney-sweeper of Astrology_. Some of the titles are too
'Rabelaesian', or what some booksellers call 'curious', to print. A
certain number of the books appear to have actually existed outside the
author's imagination.

P. 45. _Herrick._--These are, of course, separate poems, scattered fruit
of the _Hesperides_. See also the note on page 390.

'Absyrtus-like': an allusion, of course, to the story of Medea, who took
her brother Absyrtus with her when she fled with Jason. Being nearly
overtaken by her father, Medea murdered Absyrtus, and strewed the road
with pieces of his body so that the pursuit might be stayed.

P. 46. _Daniel._--This sonnet was prefaced to the second edition of
Florio's _Montaigne_ (1613), and is often ascribed to the translator;
but the weight of criticism credits the authorship to Daniel. Mr.
Locker-Lampson was tempted to write a couple of verses for the fly-leaf
of the Rowfant Montaigne, which not only belonged to Shakespeare, but
was also given by Pope to Gay and enjoyed by Johnson:

    For me the halycon days have passed,
    I'm here and with a dunce at last.

See note on previous page.

P. 47. _Milton._--Milton's prose masterpiece was printed, in a modified
form, by Mirabeau, under the title _Sur la Liberté de la Presse_, imité
de l'Anglais, de Milton.

P. 49. _Leighton._--

    Methinks in that refulgent sphere
      That knows not sun or moon,
    An earth-born saint might long to hear
      One verse of 'Bonnie Doon'.--O. W. HOLMES.

P. 49. _Hazlitt._--'Because they both wrote essays and were fond of the
Elizabethans,' Mr. Augustine Birrell says, 'it became the fashion to
link Hazlitt's name with Lamb's. Hazlitt suffered by the comparison.'

P. 50. _Hunt._--The poet is Wordsworth and the lines 'Oh that my name'
are found in 'Personal Talk'. See page 21.

P. 52. _Carlyle._--In _The Hero as Priest_ Carlyle wrote of Luther's
written works: 'The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete
for us; but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed
the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough; Luther's merit in
literary history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of
all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of
his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no
Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a
man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged
sterling sense and strength. He flashes-out illumination from him; his
smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the
matter. Good humour too, nay, tender affection, nobleness, and depth:
this man could have been a Poet too! He had to _work_ an Epic Poem, not
write one.'

    Beneath the rule of men entirely great
    The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
    The arch-enchanter's wand!--itself a nothing.--
    But taking sorcery from the master-hand
    To paralyse the Caesars, and to strike
    The loud earth breathless!--Take away the sword--
    States can be saved without it!

           LYTTON. _Richelieu_, Act II, sc. ii.

P. 53. _Macaulay._--'Macaulay is like a book in breeches.'--SYDNEY
SMITH.

P. 53. _Maurice._--The first Ptolemy founded the famous Alexandrian
Library which is supposed to have been partly destroyed by Christian
fanatics in 391 A.D., the Arabs in 641 completing the work of
destruction.

P. 57. _Fuller._--'Fuller's language!' Coleridge writes: 'Grant me
patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap for a
whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to Johnson and
Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!--a painstaking old charwoman of
the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern! The venerable rust and dust of the
whole firm are not worth an ounce of Fuller's earth!'

The rest of this essay will be found on page 79. The learned man
referred to in the last paragraph is Erasmus.

P. 58. _Browne._--Pineda in _Monarchica Ecclesiastica_ mentions 1,040
authors. See the note above on Maurice.

P. 60. _Addison._--'The multiplication of readers is the multiplication
of loaves. On the day when Christ created that symbol, he caught a
glimpse of printing. His miracle is this marvel. Behold a book. I will
nourish with it five thousand souls--a million souls--all humanity. In
the action of Christ bringing forth the loaves, there is Gutenberg
bringing forth books. One sower heralds the other.... Gutenberg is for
ever the auxiliary of life; he is the permanent fellow-workman in the
great work of civilization. Nothing is done without him. He has marked
the transition of the man-slave to the free man. Try and deprive
civilization of him, you become Egypt.'--VICTOR HUGO on Shakespeare.

P. 61. _De Quincey._--'The few shelves which would hold all the true
classics extant might receive as many more of the like as there is any
chance that the next two or three centuries could produce, without
burthening the select and leisurely scholar with a sense of how much he
had to read.'--C. PATMORE. _Principle in Art: William Barnes._

P. 63. _Temple._--Sir William Temple's historic dispute with Wotton and
Bentley, in which he had the assistance of Charles Boyle, afterwards
Earl of Orrery, provoked Swift's _Battle of the Books_. Compare
Boileau's _La Lutrin_.

P. 63. _Swift._--'"The Battle of the Books" is the fancy of a lover of
libraries.'--LEIGH HUNT.

The royal library at St. James's alluded to was one of the nine
privileged libraries which received copies of new books under the
Copyright Act of Anne. The privilege passed to the British Museum in
1757, when George II made over the royal collection to the nation.

P. 65. _Bacon._--Sir William Temple in his _Essay on the Ancient and
Modern Learning_ (pp. 59, 63, 110) concludes 'with a Saying of Alphonsus
Sirnamed the Wise, King of Aragon: That among so many things as are by
Men possessed or pursued in the Course of their Lives, all the rest are
Bawbles, Besides Old Wood to Burn, Old Wine to Drink, Old Friends to
Converse with, and Old Books to Read'.

P. 67. _Goldsmith._--Horace Walpole wrote to the Rev. William Cole
(Letter 2337; Oxford edition): 'There is a chapter in Voltaire that
would cure anybody of being a great man even in his own eyes. It is the
chapter in which a Chinese goes into a bookseller's shop, and marvels at
not finding any of his own country's classics.'

P. 69. _Hazlitt._--'William Hazlitt, I believe, has no books, except
mine; but he has Shakespeare and Rousseau by heart.'--LEIGH HUNT.

P. 71. _Hazlitt._--Hazlitt wrote this essay in Florence, on his
honeymoon, and it opens with a quotation from Sterne: 'And what of this
new book, that the whole world make such a rout about?' Lord Byron had
died in the previous year, 1824.

'Laws are not like women, the worse for being old.'--The Duke of
Buckingham's speech in the House of Lords in Charles the Second's time
(Hazlitt's note).

P. 72. _Dudley._--Rogers is reported to have said, 'When a new book
comes out I read an old one.'

P. 73. _Macaulay._--Pyrgopolynices (Plautus: _Miles Gloriosus_); Thraso
(Terence: _Eunuch_); Bobadil (Ben Jonson: _Every Man in his Humour_);
Bessus (Beaumont and Fletcher: _A King and no King_); Pistol (_The Merry
Wives of Windsor_); Parolles (_All's Well that Ends Well_);
Nephelococcygia (Aristophanes: _The Birds_--the cuckoos' town in the
clouds); Lilliput (Swift: _Gulliver's Travels_--the pygmies' country).

P. 77. _Ascham._--Thomas Blundeville wrote some lines in praise of Roger
Ascham's Latin grammar:--

    Of English books as I could find,
    I have perused many a one:
    Yet so well done unto my mind,
    As this is, yet have I found none.

    The words of matter here do rise,
    So fitly and so naturally,
    As heart can wish or wit devise,
    In my conceit and fantasy.

    The words well chosen and well set,
    Do bring such light unto the sense:
    As if I lacked I would not let
    To buy this book for forty pence.

This was published in 1561.

P. 78. _Wither._--Bevis of Hampton, a hero of early mediaeval romance.
The story has been published by the Early English Text Society.

Compare 'The common rabble of scribblers and blur-papers which nowadays
stuff stationers' shops.'--MONTAIGNE.

P. 79. _Fuller._--The other portion of this essay will be found on page
57. Arius Montanus was the court chaplain of Philip II of Spain, and he
personally superintended the printing of the _Biblia Polyglotta_ (8
vols., 1569-73), the most famous of the books printed by Christophe
Plantin. The printing office is one of the sights of Antwerp, whose
council bought the property from Plantin's descendants in 1876 for
£48,000.

Compare also: 'Evil books corrupt at once both our manners and our
taste.'--FIELDING.

P. 80. _Addison._--Addison 'takes off the severity of this speculation'
with an anecdote of an atheistical author who was sick unto death. A
curate, to comfort him, said he did not believe any besides the author's
particular friends or acquaintance had ever been at the pains of reading
his book, or that anybody after his death would ever inquire after it.
'The dying Man had still so much the Frailty of an Author in him, as to
be cut to the Heart with these Consolations; and without answering the
good Man, asked his Friends about him (with a Peevishness that is
natural to a sick Person) where they had picked up such a Blockhead?' It
seems that the author recovered, 'and has since written two or three
other Tracts with the same Spirit, and very luckily for his poor Soul
with the same success.'

P. 83. _Milton._--'For he [Pliny the Elder] read no book which he did
not make extracts from. He used to say that "no book was so bad but some
good might be got out of it."'--PLINY THE YOUNGER.

P. 84. _Baxter._--'Richard, Richard, dost thou think we will let thee
poison the court? Richard, thou art an old knave. Thou hast written
books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of sedition as an
egg is full of meat.'--Judge Jeffreys' address at Baxter's trial.

P. 85. _Athenian Mercury._--An 'answer to correspondents'--the question
'Whether 'tis lawful to read Romances?' being asked in _The Athenian
Mercury_. This, the first popular periodical published in this country,
was started in 1691, and written by John Dunton, R. Sault, and Samuel
(the father of John) Wesley; the last number appeared in 1697, and
Dunton collected into three volumes the most valuable questions and
answers under the title of _The Athenian Oracle_.

Gray's wish was to be always lying on sofas, reading 'eternal new novels
of Crébillon and Marivaux'.

P. 86. _Cobbett._--Cobbett attacks Dr. Johnson, because in a pamphlet he
urged war on the American colonies; Burke, because in another pamphlet
he urged war on revolutionary France. 'The first war lost us America,
the last cost us six hundred millions of money, and has loaded us with
forty millions a year of taxes.'

P. 86. _More._--Tom Hickathrift, who killed a giant at Tylney, Norfolk,
with a cartwheel. He dates from the Conquest, and was made governor of
Thanet.

P. 87. _Austen._--_Cecilia_ and _Camilla_, both by Mme. D'Arblay;
_Belinda_, by Miss Edgeworth.

'She [Diana] says of Romance: "The young who avoid that region escape
the title of Fool at the cost of a celestial crown."'-GEORGE MEREDITH.
_Diana of the Crossways._

P. 87. _Herschel._--'The most influential books, and the truest in their
influence, are works of fiction.'--R. L. STEVENSON.

P. 89. _Burton._--'They lard their lean books with the fat of others'
works.'--BURTON.

P. 90. _Milton._--South said that _Eikon Basilike_ was 'composed with
such an unfailing majesty of diction, that it seems to have been written
with a sceptre rather than a pen'.

Milton condemns the king for having 'so little care of truth in his last
words, or honour to himself, or to his friends, or sense of his
afflictions, or of that sad hour which was upon him, as immediately
before his death to pop into the hand of that grave bishop [Juxon] who
attended him, for a special relic of his saintly exercises, a prayer
stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a
heathen god; and that in no serious book, but the vain amatorious poem
of Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_'.

P. 91. _Dryden._--Hazlitt, who could not 'much relish Ben Jonson',
describes him as 'a great borrower from the works of others, and a
plagiarist even from nature; so little freedom is there in his
imitations of her, and he appears to receive her bounty like an alms'.
J. A. Symonds, stating that Jonson 'held the prose writers and poets of
antiquity in solution in his spacious memory', points out that such
looting on his part of classical treasuries of wit and wisdom was
accounted no robbery in his age.

P. 91. _Sheridan._--Churchill has the same thought in _The Apology_:

    Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
    Defacing first, then claiming for their own.

P. 93. _Pattison._--Matthew Arnold, in the preface to _Literature and
Dogma_ (1873), points out that 'To read to good purpose we must read a
great deal, and be content not to use a great deal of what we read. We
shall never be content not to use the whole, or nearly the whole, of
what we read, unless we read a great deal.'

P. 96. _Mitford._--'Every abridgement of a good book is a stupid
abridgement.'--MONTAIGNE.

P. 98. _Tennyson._--J. J. Jusserand, in the first annual Shakespeare
lecture before the British Academy (July 5, 1911), used eloquent
language which might be said to justify bibliographies:--'Books, like
their authors, have their biography. They live their own lives. Some
behave like honourable citizens of the world of thought, do good,
propagate sound views, strengthen heart and courage, assuage, console,
improve those men to whose hearths they have been invited. Others
corrupt or debase, or else turn minds towards empty frivolities. In
proportion to their fame, and to the degree of their perenniality, is
the good or evil that they do from century to century, eternal
benefactors of mankind or deathless malefactors. Posted on the road
followed by humanity, they help or destroy the passers-by; they deserve
gratitude eternal, or levy the toll of some of our life's blood, leaving
us weaker; highwaymen or good Samaritans. Some make themselves heard at
once and continue to be listened to for ever; others fill the ears for
one or two generations, and then begin an endless sleep; or, on the
contrary, long silent or misunderstood, they awake from their torpor,
and astonished mankind discovers with surprise long-concealed treasures
like those trodden upon by the unwary visitor of unexplored ruins.'

P. 99. _Helps._--'My desire is ... that mine adversary had written a
book.'--The Author of Job, ch. 31.

'Curll, Pope's victim and accomplice ... hit on one of those
epoch-making ideas which are so simple when once they are conceived, so
difficult, save for the loftiest genius, in their first conception. It
occurred to him that, in a world governed by the law of mortality, men
might be handsomely entertained on one another's remains. He lost no
time in putting his theory into action. During the years of his activity
he published some forty or fifty separate _Lives_, intimate, anecdotal,
scurrilous sometimes, of famous and notorious persons who had the
ill-fortune to die during his lifetime.... His books commanded a large
sale, and modern biography was established.'--SIR W. RALEIGH. _Six
Essays on Johnson._

It is related in _The Percy Anecdotes_ that 'A gentleman calling on
Archbishop Tillotson observed in his library one shelf of books of
various forms and sizes, all richly bound, finely gilt and lettered. He
inquired what favourite authors these were that had been so remarkably
distinguished by his Grace. "These," said the Archbishop, "are my own
personal friends; and what is more I have made them such (for they were
avowedly my enemies), by the use I have made of those hints which their
malice had suggested to me. From these I have received more profit than
from the advice of my best and most cordial friends; and therefore you
see I have rewarded them accordingly."'

P. 99. _Disraeli._--Compare Emerson: 'There is properly no history, only
biography; and Carlyle: 'History is the essence of innumerable
biographies.'

'Those that write of men's lives,' says Montaigne, 'forasmuch as they
amuse and busy themselves more about counsels than events, more about
that which cometh from within than that which appeareth outward; they
are fittest for me.'

P. 102. _Glanvill._--An original Fellow of the Royal Society, and in
many ways an interesting divine, probably best known in these days
through Matthew Arnold's 'Scholar-Gypsy', whose story is told in _The
Vanity of Dogmatizing_ (1661), from which this quotation and that on
page 118 are made.

P. 103. _Jonson._--The poem 'To the Memory of my Beloved Master William
Shakespeare, and what he hath left us' appeared in 1623.

P. 105. _Jonson._--This was printed in the First Folio of Shakespeare's
works, 1623, on the page opposite the Droeshout portrait.

P. 105. _Milton._--These lines were printed anonymously in the Second
Folio Shakespeare, 1632, and, it is believed, this was Milton's first
appearance as a poet.

P. 106. _Dryden._--This was printed under the engraving in Tonson's
folio edition of _Paradise Lost_ (1688). Mr. F. A. Mumby, in _The
Romance of Bookselling_, recalls that in Moseley's first edition of
Milton's poems there was an atrocious portrait of the poet by William
Marshall. Milton wrote four lines in Greek, which the artist, innocent
of that language, gravely cut into the plate, lines that Dr. Masson has
thus translated:

    That an unskilful hand had carved this print
    You'd say at once, seeing the living face;
    But, finding here no jot of me, my friends,
    Laugh at the botching artist's mis-attempt.

P. 106. _Fletcher._--The subject of this poem was Giles Fletcher, the
author of _Christ's Victory and Triumph_, 'equally beloved of the Muses
and Graces.'

P. 106. _Crashaw._--From _The Flaming Heart_. 'His masterpiece, one of
the most astonishing things in English or any literature, comes without
warning at the end of _The Flaming Heart_. For page after page the poet
has been playing on some trifling conceit ... and then in a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, without warning of any sort, the metre changes,
the poet's inspiration catches fire, and then rushes up into the heaven
of poetry the marvellous rocket of song: "Live in these conquering
leaves," &c. The contrast is perhaps unique as regards the
colourlessness of the beginning and the splendid colour of the end. But
contrasts like it occur all over Crashaw's work.'--PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY.
_History of Elizabethan Literature._

As an interesting example of Crashaw's conceits it may be noted that,
when alluding to Mary Magdalene, he speaks of her eyes as 'Portable and
compendious oceans.'

P. 107. _Voltaire._--The philosopher also remarks, in the same article,
that 'there is hardly a single philosophical or theological book in
which heresies and impieties may not be found by misinterpreting, or
adding to, or subtracting from, the sense'.

P. 112. _Carlyle._--Abelard, born 1079, died 1142, is less known now as
a famous teacher at the University of Paris than as the lover of
Héloise.

P. 113. _Trapp and Browne._--When George I sent a present of some books,
in November 1715, to the University of Cambridge, he sent at the same
time a troop of horse to Oxford. This inspired Dr. Trapp and provoked
the rejoinder from Sir William Browne.

P. 114. _Earle._--Mr. A. S. West, in his edition of Earle's
_Microcosmographie; or a Piece of the World discovered; in Essayes and
Characters_, says: 'The critic supposed that _omneis_ was the original
form of the accusative plural of _omnis_, and that the forms _omnes_ and
_omnis_ had taken its place. In order to adhere to the older spelling
"he writes _omneis_ at length". _Quicquid_ is cited as an instance of
pedantry because the ordinary man wrote the word as _quidquid_, and
doubtless so pronounced it. The critic's gerund may be described as
"inconformable" because it resists attraction--remains a gerund and does
not become a gerundive. Or Earle may have had in view passages in which
the gerund of transitive verbs with _est_ govern an object.'

P. 115. _Goldsmith._--'When Dr. Johnson is free to confess that he does
not admire Gray's _Elegy_, and Macaulay to avow that he sees little to
praise in Dickens and Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks have the
courage of their opinions?' Such is the question asked by James Payn in
the _Nineteenth Century_ (March 1880), his article being entitled 'Sham
Admiration in Literature'. Mr. Payn noted that 'curiously enough, it is
women who have the most courage in the expression of their literary
opinions', instancing the authoress of _Jane Eyre_, who 'did not derive
much pleasure from the perusal of the works of the other Jane [Austen]',
and Harriet Martineau, who confessed to him that she could see no
beauties in _Tom Jones_.

'There is no ignorance more shameful than to admit as true that which
one does not understand: and there is no advantage so great as that of
being set free from error.'--XENOPHON. _Memorabilia._

P. 118. _Fielding._--'What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my
word, I think the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, _The Alchemist_, and _Tom Jones_,
the three most perfect plots ever planned.... How charming, how
wholesome, Fielding always is!'--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Table Talk._

P. 123. _Erasmus._--The translation is the work of Nathaniel Bailey,
lexicographer and schoolmaster, who died in 1742. Desiderius and Erasmus
are Latin and Greek for Gerhard 'the beloved', the name of the scholar's
father.

P. 123. _Colton._--Compare R. B. Sheridan's: 'Easy writing's curst hard
reading.'

P. 124. _Bacon._--Mr. A. S. Gaye, in the new Clarendon Press edition of
the _Essays_, points out that on almost every page the reader will find
quotations from the Bible and from the Greek and Latin classics,
especially Tacitus, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, and Ovid, besides
frequent allusions to biblical, classical, and mediaeval history. 'It is
also remarkable that the quotations are more often than not inaccurate,
not only in words but in sense.... Bacon furnished in himself an
exception to the rule which he laid down in his Essay "Of Studies"; for
though "reading" made him "a full man", "writing" did not make him "an
exact man".'

P. 128. _Boswell._--One of Mrs. Piozzi's anecdotes of Dr. Johnson is
that he asked 'Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was
wished longer by its readers excepting _Don Quixote_, _Robinson Crusoe_,
and the _Pilgrim's Progress_?' Johnson declared that the work of
Cervantes was the greatest in the world, 'speaking of it, I mean, as a
book of entertainment.'

P. 132. _Emerson._--Shakespeare's phrase: _Taming of the Shrew_, Act I,
sc. i.

P. 133. _Emerson._--O. W. Holmes applies the proverb to the Bible.
'What you bring away from the Bible depends to some extent on what you
carry to it.'

P. 135. _Calverley._--See Tupper's lines on page 12. The allusions are,
of course, to the creations of Bulwer-Lytton.

P. 138. _Gibbon._--F. W. Robertson's opinion is worth recording: 'It is
very surprising to find how little we retain of a book, how little we
have really made our own, when we come to interrogate ourselves as to
what account we can give of it, however we may seem to have mastered it
by understanding it. Hundreds of books read once have passed as
completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline
of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which is
worth the trouble, fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides, enables
one to read other books with more attention and more profit.'

P. 140. _Hamilton._--'This assumes that the book to be operated on is
your own, and perhaps is rather too elaborate a counsel of perfection
for most of us.'--LORD MORELY.

P. 145. _Addison._--Hor. _Ars Poet._ 1. 319:--

      When the sentiments and manners please,
    And all the characters are wrought with ease,
    Your tale, though void of beauty, force, and art,
    More strongly shall delight and warm the heart;
    Than where a lifeless pomp of verse appears,
    And with sonorous trifles charms our ears.--FRANCIS.

Butler, writing of 'A small poet' (_Characters_), says: 'There was one
that lined a hat-case with a paper of Benlowe's poetry: Prynne bought it
by chance, and put a new demicastor into it. The first time he wore it
he felt a singing in his head, which within two days turned to a
vertigo.' A 'demicastor' is a hat.

P. 147. _Scott._--Mr. W. J. Courthope, in his Warton Lecture on English
Poetry before the British Academy, read on October 25, 1911, observes
that 'the best illustration of historic change in "romantic" temper is
perhaps to be found in a comparison of Cervantes' account of the
character of Don Quixote [see p. 155] with Walter Scott's representation
of the romanticism of the hero of _Waverley_. Don Quixote's "fancy",
says Cervantes, "grew full of what he used to read about in his books,
enchantments, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and
all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the
whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no
history in the world had more reality in it." ... "My intention," says
Scott, "is not to follow the steps of the inimitable Cervantes in
describing such total perversion of intellect as misconstrues the
objects actually presented to the senses, but the more common aberration
from sound judgement, which apprehends occurrences indeed in their
reality, but communicates to them a tincture of its own romantic
colouring."' Scott expatiates at length on Waverley's reading in the
third chapter of his novel.

P. 148. _Boswell._--Macaulay writes in his review of Southey's edition
of _The Pilgrim's Progress_: 'Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were
desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an
exception in favour of _The Pilgrim's Progress_. That work was one of
the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit
that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most
pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories.'

Boswell relates that Dr. Johnson 'had a peculiar facility in seizing at
once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of
perusing it from beginning to end.'

P. 149. _Chandos._--The authorship of _Horae Subsecivae_ is not
absolutely known, but it is attributed to James I's favourite courtier.
It was published in 1620, the year before Chandos died.

P. 149. _Waller._--'A library well chosen cannot be too extensive, but
some there are who amass a great quantity of books, which they keep for
show, and not for service. Of such persons, Louis XI of France aptly
enough observed, that "they resembled _hunch-backed_ people, who carried
a great burden, which _they never saw_".'--W. KEDDIE. _Cyclopaedia_.

P. 153. _Coleridge._--The most deadly thing that Coleridge wrote was
when he classed the patrons of the circulating libraries as lower in the
scale than that reading public nine-tenths of whose reading is confined
to periodicals and 'Beauties, elegant Extracts and Anas [Anecdotes]'.

P. 153. _Boswell._--Dr. Birkbeck Hill points out that Boswell alludes to
this opinion in one of his letters, modestly adding: 'I am afraid I have
not read books enough to be able to talk from them.' Johnson
particularized Langton as talking from books, 'and Garrick would if he
talked seriously.'

P. 154. _S. Smith._--Bettinelli, a scholar and a Jesuit (1718-1808), who
attacked the reputation of Dante and Petrarch.

Coventry Patmore wrote: 'If you want to shine as a diner-out, the best
way is to know something which others do not know, and not to know many
things which everybody knows. This takes much less reading, and is
doubly effective, inasmuch as it makes you a really good, that is, an
interested listener, as well as a talker.'--(_On Obscure Books._)

P. 154. _Colton._--'Methinks 'tis a pitiful piece of knowledge that can
be learnt from an index and a poor ambition to be rich in the inventory
of another's treasure.'--J. GLANVILL. _The Vanity of Dogmatizing._

P. 155. _Cervantes._--A whole chapter is devoted to the destruction of
Don Quixote's library. (Part i, chap, vi.) The books that, condemned by
the priest, were passed into the housekeeper's hands and thence into
the fire were:--_Adventures of Esplandian_; _Amadis of Greece_; _Don
Olivante de Laura_; _Florismarte of Hyrcania_; _The Knight Platir_; _The
Knight of the Cross_; _Bernardo del Carpio_; _Roncesvalles_; _Palmerin
de Oliva_; _Diana_, called the Second, by Salmantino; _The Shepherd of
Iberia_; _The Nymphs of Henares_; and _The Curse of Jealousy_. The
priest, however, put by for further examination or determined to save:
_Amadis de Gaul_; _The Mirror of Chivalry_, and 'all other books that
shall be found treating of French matters'; _Palmerin of England_; _Don
Belianis_; _Tirante the White_; _Diana_, of Montemayor, and its
continuation by Gil Polo; _Ten Books of the Fortune of Love_; _The
Shepherd of Filida_; _The Treasure of Divers Poems_ (de Padilla); _Book
of Songs_, by Lopez Maldonado; _Galatea_, by Cervantes; _Araucana_;
_Austriada_; _Monserrate_; and the _Tears of Angelica_. The curious
reader will find these volumes traced in the admirable notes in J.
Fitzmaurice-Kelly's edition of _Don Quixote_ in 'The World's Classics'.
Cervantes, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly says, devoured in his wandering youth,
'those folios of chivalrous adventures which he, and he alone, has saved
from the iniquity of oblivion'. The early association of Barabbas and
books will be noticed.

It is the translation by Charles Jervas, first published in 1742, which
is here employed.

_The Renowned Romance of Amadis of Gaul_, by Vasco Lobeira, which was
expressly condemned by Montaigne (see p. 144), was translated from the
Spanish version of Garciodonez de Montalvo by Southey.

P. 159. _Ruskin._--As Mr. Frederic Harrison points out, 'Books are no
more education than laws are virtue; and, just as profligacy is easy
within the strict limits of law, a boundless knowledge of books may be
found with a narrow education.'

P. 159. _E. B. Browning._--This letter was written to 'Orion' Horne
three years before Mrs. Browning's marriage in 1843, when she was
thirty-seven. Compare Matthew Arnold in the preface to _Literature and
Dogma_ (1873): 'Nothing can be truer than what Butler says, that really,
in general, no part of our time is more idly spent than the time spent
in reading. Still, culture is indispensably necessary, and culture is
reading; but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with system.'

P. 161. _Maurice._--This is better than Sydney Smith's attitude
expressed in the question, 'Who reads an American book, or goes to an
American play, or looks at an American picture or statue?'

P. 162. _Blackie._--'Reading is seeing by proxy--is learning indirectly
through another man's faculties, instead of directly through one's own
faculties; and such is the prevailing bias, that the indirect learning
is thought preferable to the direct learning, and usurps the name of
cultivation.'--HERBERT SPENCER. _The Study of Sociology._

P. 163. _Montaigne._--'Montesquieu used to say that he had never known
a pain or a distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good
book.'--LORD MORLEY.

P. 163. _Davies._--

    What is the end of Fame? 'Tis but to fill
      A certain portion of uncertain paper ...
    To have, when the original is dust,
    A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

                LORD BYRON, _Don Juan_.

P. 164. _Hall._--'Hard students are commonly troubled with gouts,
catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradiopepsia, bad eyes, stone and colic,
crudities, oppitations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such
diseases as come by overmuch sitting; they are most part lean, dry,
ill-coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times
their lives, and all through immoderate pains, and extraordinary
studies.'--R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._

P. 165. _Lytton._--'I look upon a library as a kind of mental chemist's
shop, filled with the crystals of all forms and hues which have come
from the union of individual thought with local circumstances or
universal principles.'--O. W. HOLMES. _The Professor at the
Breakfast-Table._

P. 169. _Walpole._--Mr. Augustine Birrell in _Obiter Dicta: The Office
of Literature_ writes that the author's office is to make the reader
happy:--

'Cooks, warriors, and authors must be judged by the effects they
produce: toothsome dishes, glorious victories, pleasant books--these are
our demands....

'Literature exists to please--to lighten the burden of men's lives; to
make them for a short while forget their sorrows and their sins, their
silenced hearths, their disappointed hopes, their grim futures--and
those men of letters are the best loved who have best performed
literature's truest office.'

P. 169. _Chaucer._--The book referred to is Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.

P. 169. _Digby._--Sir Kenelm Digby's 'observations' are generally
printed with _Religio Medici_, although in a letter to Sir T. Browne,
who had written to him on the subject, he explained that the hastily set
down notes did not merit the press, and would 'serve only for a private
letter, or a familiar discourse with lady-auditors'.

To Sir Thomas Browne, 'a library,' says Coleridge, 'was a living world,
and every book a man, absolute flesh and blood.'

P. 170. _Boswell._--'Who is he that is now wholly overcome with
idleness, or otherwise involved in a labyrinth of worldly cares,
troubles, and discontents, that will not be much lightened in his mind
by reading of some enticing story, true or feigned, where as in a glass
he shall observe what our forefathers have done, the beginnings, ruins,
ends, falls of commonwealths, private men's actions displayed to the
life, &c. Plutarch therefore calls them _secundas mensas et bellaria_,
the second courses and junkets, because they were usually read at
noblemen's feasts.'--R. BURTON. _Anatomy_.

P. 171. _Rabelais._--

    Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil
    O'er books consumed the midnight oil?--J. GAY.

P. 171. _Wilson._--This is often taken to be an antique. As a matter of
fact, Mr. John Wilson, a London bookseller, stated to Mr. Austin Dobson
that he wrote the lines as a motto for one of his second-hand
catalogues. Wilson, Mr. Dobson tells us, was amused at the vogue the
lines eventually obtained.

P. 172. _Chaucer._--This is the earlier version, and to be preferred to
the later, in which the passage ends:

    Farwel my book and my devocioun!

wel unethe=scarcely any.

P. 175. _Tickle._--'Written in a fit of the gout.'

'And laid the storm,' &c.: the advice given to Augustus by Athenodorus
the Stoic philosopher.

See Shakespeare's _Love's Labour's Lost_, Act v, sc. i. Holofernes
'teaches boys the horn-book'.

P. 181. _Richardson._--In his preface to _Pamela_ Richardson claims to
give 'practical examples worthy to be followed in the most critical and
affecting cases by the modest virgin, the chaste bride, and the obliging
wife'. The heroine becomes Mrs. B----, and Billy is the first-born.
Locke's treatise was published in 1693, or forty-seven years before
Richardson's novel, and the philosopher observes 'That most Children's
Constitutions are either spoiled, or at least harmed, by _Cockering and
Tenderness_'. 'Mr. B.' recommended better than he knew.

P. 181. _Johnson_ ('At large in the library').--Ruskin gives the same
advice. See p. 208.

P. 183. _Gibbon._--The _Autobiography_, in Sir Archibald Alison's
opinion, is 'the most perfect account of an eminent man's life, from his
own hand, which exists in any language'.

P. 186. _Landor._--See the poem to Wordsworth on p. 21.

P. 187. _Hunt._--The friend referred to was Shelley.

P. 188. _Dickens._--Of this passage, Forster says in the _Life of
Dickens_, 'It is one of the many passages in _Copperfield_ which are
literally true.... Every word of this personal recollection had been
written down as fact, some years before it found its way into _David
Copperfield_; the only change in the fiction being his omission of the
name of a cheap series of novelists then in course of publication, by
means of which his father had become happily the owner of so large a
lump of literary treasure in his small collection of books.'

Apropos of Defoe, Macaulay, who could not 'understand the mania of some
people about Defoe', admitted that 'he certainly wrote an excellent
book--the first part of _Robinson Crusoe_ ... my delight before I was
five years old'.

P. 189. _Hazlitt._--It is reported (Dibdin relates in _Bibliomania_)
that a certain man, of the name of Similis, who fought under the Emperor
Hadrian, became so wearied and disgusted with the number of troublesome
events which he met with in that mode of life, that he retired and
devoted himself wholly to leisure and reading, and to meditations upon
divine and human affairs, after the manner of Pythagoras. In this
retirement, Similis was wont frequently to exclaim that '_now_ he began
to _live_': at his death he desired the following inscription to be
placed upon his tomb.

        Here lies Similis;
    In the seventieth year of his age
    But only the seventh of his life.

In a note it is stated that 'This story is related by Dion Cassius and
from him told by Spizelius in his _Infelix Literarius_'.

P. 190. _Donne._--This is the title given by Donne's editors, but is
nonsense. Grosart explains that Pindar's instructress was Corinna the
Theban, and that Lucan's 'help' is probably his helpmeet--Argentaria
Polla, his wife who survived him.

P. 192. _Dante._--This is the famous passage in Canto V referring to
Paolo and Francesca.--(Cary's translation.)

P. 196. _Moore._--

     For where is any author in the world
     Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?

    SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost_, Act IV. Sc. iii.

P. 198. _More._--Warton thinks it probable that Sir Thomas More--'one of
the best jokers of the age'--may have written this epigram, which he
considers the first pointed epigram in our language. But by some the
lines are credited to Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who is memorable,
among other things, for introducing the sonnet from Italy into England,
a distinction which he shares with Wyatt.

P. 199. _Moore._--'Mamurra was a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted
about anything, except who was his father; Bombastus, one of the names
of the great scholar and quack Paracelsus. St. Jerome was scolded by an
angel for reading Cicero, as Gratia tells the story in his _Concordantia
discordantium Canonum_, and says, that for this reason bishops were not
allowed to read the classics'.

P. 203. _Scott._--The Roxburgh Club was inaugurated on the day of the
sale of the Duke of Roxburgh's library in 1812 in order to print for
members rare books or manuscripts. The club had numerous offspring,
including the Bannatyne Club (see p. 270, and the note thereon). The
Duke of Roxburgh's library, which was celebrated for its Caxtons, sold
for £23,341.

P. 205. _E. B. Browning._--

    Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
    A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse--and Thou
      Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
    And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

             E. FITZGERALD. _Omar Khayyám._

P. 207. _Macaulay._--'Neither we nor divinity require much learning in
women; Francis, Duke of Brittany, son to John V, when he was spoke unto
for a marriage between him and Isabel, a daughter of Scotland, and some
told him she was meanly brought up, and without any instruction of
learning, answered he loved her the better for it, and that a woman was
wise enough if she could but make a difference between the shirt and
doublet of her husband's.'--MONTAIGNE.

P. 208. _Ruskin._--Compare Johnson's advice on page 181.

P. 209. _Addison._--Virgil _Aeneid_, vii. 805:

    Unused to spinning, in the loom unskilled.--DRYDEN.

The _Virgil_ of Ogilby, or Ogilvy, originally a dancing-master, was
published in 1649, and was the first complete English translation
(Ogilby is mentioned by Pope, see page 313); _Cassandra_, _Cleopatra_,
_Astraea_, _The Grand Cyrus_ and _Clelia_ were French romances
translated into English. Sidney called his pastoral romance _The
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_; Sherlock's _Discourse on Death_ passed
through forty editions; _The Fifteen Comforts_, a translation of a
French satirical work of the fifteenth century; Sir Richard Baker's
_Chronicle of the Kings of England from the time of the Romans'
Government unto the Death of King James_ (1641); Mrs. Manley was tried
for libelling the nobility in her _Secret Memoirs and Manners of several
Persons of Quality of both Sexes from the New Atlantis_ (1707); the
Fielding referred to is Beau Fielding, tried at the Old Bailey in 1706
for a bigamous marriage with the Duchess of Cleveland.

In Addison's time, Dr. Johnson wrote, 'in the female world, any
acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.'

P. 211. _Addison._--Hor. 2 _Ep._ ii. 61:

      What would you have me do,
    When out of twenty I can please not two?--
    One likes the pheasant's wing, and one the leg;
    The vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg;
    Hard task, to hit the palate of such guests.--POPE.

The _Vindication_ was the work of Charles Leslie, the non-juror;
_Pharamond_, a romance dealing with the Frankish empire, by La
Calprenède; _Cassandra_ is wrong--the French work, also by La
Calprenède, was _Cassandre_ (the son of Antipater); _All for Love_,
Dryden's play; _Sophonisba_, by Lee; _The Innocent Adultery_, the second
name of Sotherne's _The Fatal Marriage_; _Mithridates_ was by Lee, who
also wrote _The Rival Queens, or The Death of Alexander the Great_, and
_Theodosius_; _Aureng-Zebe_, Dryden's tragedy. (T. Arnold's _Addison_:
Clarendon Press).

P. 213. _Sheridan._--The first reference to a circulating library given
in the _Oxford English Dictionary_ is an advertisement, June 12,
1742--'Proposals for erecting a Public Circulating Library in London.'
Joseph Knight, in the Oxford edition of Sheridan's _Plays_, annotates
this passage fully. Dillingham, sending his Latin translation of
Herbert's _Porch_ to Sancroft, says: 'I know that if these should be
once published, it would be too late then to prevent, if not to correct
a fault; I therefore shall take it as a great kindness if you will
please to put on your critical naile, and to give your impartial censure
on these papers while they are yet in the tireing roome; and I shall
endeavour to amend them with one great or more lesser blotts.' Sancroft
replies: 'I greedily took your original in one hand, and your copy in
the other, of which I had suffered one nayl (though it pretends not to
be a critical one) to grow ever since you bespoke its service.'

Compare Herrick:--

    Be bold, my book, nor be abashed, or fear
    The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe;
    But by the Muses swear, all here is good,
    If but, well read or ill read, understood.

Blonds=blond laces, produced from unbleached silk.

All the works mentioned have been identified. The _Innocent Adultery_ is
the alternative title of Sotherne's _Fatal Marriage_; _The Whole Duty of
Man_ was by Allestree, once Provost of Eton; the 'admirable Mrs.
Chapone', an admirer of Richardson, and a contributor to the _Rambler_;
'Under the most repulsive exterior that any woman ever possessed she
concealed very superior attainments and extensive knowledge'; Fordyce
was Johnson's friend, and his sermons were specially addressed to young
women.

P. 216. _Chaucer._--holwe=hollow; courtepy=short upper coat of a coarse
material; fithele=fiddle; sautrye=psaltery; hente=borrow; yaf=gave;
scoleye=to attend school; sentence=sentiment; souninge in=conducing to.

P. 216. _Brant._--Sebastian Brant's _Narrenschiff_, published in 1497,
at Basle, was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous
events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French
knights. Barclay's translation, Professor Max Müller points out, 'was
not made from the original but from Locher's Latin translation. It
reproduces the matter, but not the marrow of the original satire ... in
some parts his translation is an improvement on the original.' _The Ship
of Fools_ in its original form, and in numerous translations, had an
enormous success, edition after edition being printed.

aparayle=apparatus.

P. 219. _Young._--T--n=Tonson.

P. 220. _Ferriar._--The first edition of this poem was issued as a
quarto pamphlet in 1809. It is reprinted in the second volume of the
second edition of Ferriar's _Illustrations of Sterne, and other Essays_,
1812, with some 140 additional lines.

'He, whom chief the laughing Muses own' is Aristophanes; the lines that
follow refer to the fire of London. D--n=Dryden.

'On one of these occasions [a book-auction] a succession of valuable
fragments of early English poetry brought prices so high and far beyond
those of ordinary expensive books in the finest condition, that it
seemed as if their imperfections were their merit; and the auctioneer,
momentarily carried off with this feeling, when the high prices began to
sink a little, remonstrated thus, "Going so low as thirty shillings,
gentlemen,--this curious book--so low as thirty shillings--and _quite
imperfect_!"'--J. H. BURTON. _The Book-Hunter._

Ferriar mentions incidentally most of the famous printers of olden time.
Aldine editions were those printed by Aldo Manuzio and his family in
Venice from 1490 to 1597. The Elzevir family became famous on account of
its duodecimos.

P. 225. _Beresford._--_Bibliosophia; or Book-wisdom_, by the Rev. J.
Beresford, was written as 'a feeling remonstrance against the _prose_
work, lately published by the Reverend T. F. Dibdin under the title of
_Bibliomania; or Book-madness_', quoted in successive pages.

P. 226. _d'Israeli._--The verse is imitated from the Latin of 'Henry
Rantzau, a Danish gentleman, the founder of the great library at
Copenhagen, whose days were dissolved in the pleasures of reading', who
'discovers his taste and ardour in the following elegant effusion'.

P. 227. _d'Israeli._--'An allusion and pun which occasioned the French
translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled no doubt by
my _facetiously_, he translates "mettant comme on l'a _très
judicieusement_ fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef". The
book, and the author alluded to, quite escaped him.'--I. D'ISRAELI.
_Curiosities of Literature: The Bibliomania, note._

P. 228. _Dibdin._--Magliabechi was born at Florence, October 29, 1633.
'He had never learned to read; and yet he was perpetually poring over
the leaves of old books that were used in his master's shop. A
bookseller, who lived in the neighbourhood, and who had often observed
this, and knew the boy could not read, asked him one day "what he meant
by staring so much on printed paper?" Magliabechi said that he did not
know how it was, but that he loved it of all things. The consequence was
that he was received, with tears of joy in his eyes, into the
bookseller's shop; and hence rose, by a quick succession, into posts of
literary honour, till he became librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.'

P. 234. _Longfellow._--Bayard Taylor, born 1825, died 1878. The allusion
is to the famous monument of the Emperor Maximilian in the Franciscan
church, or Hofkirche, at Innsbruck, where a kneeling figure of
Maximilian is surrounded by statues of his contemporaries and ancestors.
The emperor is buried actually at Wiener-Neustadt. Taylor published
_Prince Deukalion: a lyrical drama_, in 1878.

P. 236. _Browning._--Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis 'is apparently', Mrs.
Orr says, without adding to our store of knowledge, 'the name of an old
pedant who has written a tiresome book.'

P. 239. _de Bury._--J. H. Burton, in _The Book-Hunter_, tells the
following story:--It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the leaves
with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his early career may have soured
him of the proprieties. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active
mechanic, who could do many things with his hands, and contemplated
James's indolent, dreamy, 'feckless' character with impatient disgust.
When the first of _The Seasons_--_Winter_ it was, I believe--had been
completed at press, Jamie thought, by a presentation copy, to triumph
over his uncle's scepticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had
the book handsomely bound. The old man never looked inside, or asked
what the book was about, but turning it round and round with his fingers
in gratified admiration, exclaimed: 'Come, is that really our Jamie's
doin' now? Weel, I never thought the cratur wad hae had the handicraft
to do the like!'

P. 246. _H. Coleridge._--See Roscoe's poem to his books on parting with
them, p. 9.

P. 247. _Dibdin._--'There are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces
set to sale; who shall prohibit them? shall twenty licensers?'--MILTON.
_Areopagitica._

P. 249. _Burns._--Mr. Andrew Lang states that Burns saw a splendidly
bound but sadly neglected copy of Shakespeare in the library of a
nobleman in Edinburgh, and he wrote these lines on the ample margin of
one of its pages, where they were found long after the poet's death.

P. 250. _Parnell._--'It was supposed that a binding of Russian leather
secured books against insects, but the contrary was recently
demonstrated at Paris by two volumes pierced in every direction. The
first bookbinder in Paris, Bozerian, told me he knew of no remedy except
to steep the blank leaves in muriatic acid.'--PINKERTON'S _Recollections
of Paris_. Parnell's poem is translated from Theodore Beza.

'Smith was very comical about a remedy of Lady Holland's for the
bookworms in the library at Holland House, having the books washed with
some mercurial preparation. He said it was Sir Humphry Davy's opinion
that the air would become charged with the mercury, and that the whole
family would be salivated, adding, "I shall see Allen some day, with his
tongue hanging out, speechless, and shall take the opportunity to stick
a few principles into him."'--_Bon-Mots_ of Sydney Smith, edited by W.
Jerrold.

John Allen, M.D., was the librarian, described by Byron as 'the best
informed and one of the ablest men I know--a perfect Magliabechi; a
devourer, a _heluo_ of books'. His scepticism earned him the title of
'Lady Holland's atheist'.

P. 252. _King._--This is from J. Nichols's Collection of Poems, vol.
iii, _Bibliotheca_, and is ascribed 'upon conjecture only' to Dr. W.
King. _See_ p. 311.

P. 253. _d'Arblay._--Macaulay notes that Miss Burney 'describes this
conversation as delightful; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, with her
literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing in how magnificent a
manner the greatest lady in the land encouraged literature'. The
conversation took place at Windsor in December, 1785.

P. 255. _Lamb._--Walter Pater says of Charles Lamb: 'He was a true
"collector", delighting in the personal finding of a thing, in the
colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which
attest previous ownership. Wither's _Emblems_, "that old book and
quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less
because a child had coloured the plates with his paints.'

P. 256. _Milton._--'The call for books was not in Milton's age what it
is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither
traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.
The women had not then aspired to literature nor was every house
supplied with a closet of knowledge.'--DR. JOHNSON.

P. 257. _Browning._--The statue referred to is that of Giovanni delle
Bande Nere, father of Cosimo de' Medici, in the Piazza San Lorenzo. The
imaginative Sienese is Ademollo; the 'Frail one of the Flower' will be
recognized as _La Dame aux Camélias_. Browning 'translates' the
title-page of his 'find' thus:--

                A Roman murder-case:
    Position of the entire criminal cause
    Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
    With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay,
    Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death
    By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,
    At Rome on February Twenty Two,
    Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight:
    Wherein it is disputed if, and when,
    Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape
    The customary forfeit.'

P. 260. _Eliot._--

      I often wonder what the Vintners buy
    One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

              E. FITZGERALD. _Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám._

P. 263. _Lewis._--This is a portion of an imitation of Horace. _Ep._ 20,
Bk. i.

P. 265. _Gay._--The authorship of this and the following poem cannot be
decided definitely, but it is presumed that they were written by Gay and
Pope respectively, and they have been so credited in the text.

P. 269. _Lamb._--This appeared originally in _The London Magazine_, and
was reprinted by Hone in _The Every-Day Book_. It was in Hone's _Table
Book_ that Lamb's extracts from the Elizabethan dramatists were
published.

P. 269. _Goldsmith._--See Bacon, on p. 65, and the note thereon.

P. 270. _Scott._--Sir Walter was the first President of the Bannatyne
Club, and he wrote these lines for the anniversary dinner in 1823. The
club had been founded in the previous year with the object of printing
works on the history and antiquities of Scotland. Bannatyne himself,
whose name was given to the club, achieved immortality by copying out
nearly all the ancient poetry of Scotland in 1568, at a time when the
country was ravaged by plague, and the records of Scottish literature
were also in danger of destruction. Of the other names mentioned here,
Ritson had written a vegetarian book. The 'yeditur' was the name given
by Lord Eldon to James Sibbald. 'Greysteel' was a romance that David
Herd sought in vain, and it gave him his nickname.

P. 271. _Maginn._--Sung at the Booksellers' Annual Dinner, Blackwall,
June 7, 1840. Fraser, whose name lives in his magazine, died in the
following year.

It is very tempting to give more passages about booksellers but I must
refrain as it would be foreign to the purpose of this volume, and the
subject has been recently treated with great fullness and greater
ability by Mr. Frank A. Mumby in _The Romance of Bookselling_.

P. 273. _de Bury._--'Would it not grieve a man of a good spirit to see
Hobson finde more money in the tayles of 12 jades than a scholler in 200
bookes?'--_The Pilgrimage to Parnassus._ Hobson, the carrier, celebrated
by Milton, is the hero of 'Hobson's choice'.

P. 274. _Lamb._--'The motto I proposed for the [_Edinburgh_] _Review_
was: Tenui Musam meditamur avena--"we cultivate literature upon a little
oatmeal."'--SYDNEY SMITH.

P. 274. _Ruskin._--Mark Pattison said that nobody who respected himself
could have less than 1,000 volumes, and that this number of octavo
volumes could be stacked in a bookcase 13 feet by 10 feet and 6 inches
deep. He complained that the bookseller's bill in the ordinary
middle-class family is shamefully small, and he thought it monstrous
that a man who is earning £1,000 a year should spend less than £1 a week
on books. 'A shilling in the pound to be spent on books,' is Lord
Morley's comment, 'by a clerk who earns a couple of hundred pounds a
year, or by a workman who earns a quarter of that sum, is rather more, I
think, than can be reasonably expected.'

P. 276. _Lamb._--Comberbatch was the name in which Coleridge enlisted in
the Dragoons. _The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq._, was by
Thomas Amory. Leigh Hunt describes Buncle as 'a kind of innocent Henry
VIII of private life'.

Charles Lamb, who at last grew tired of lending his books, threatened to
chain Wordsworth's poems to his shelves, adding:--'For of those who
borrow, some read slow; some mean to read, but don't read; and some
neither read nor mean to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of
their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say
that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in
them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make use of it.'--SIR
T. N. TALFOURD.

P. 289. _Shakespeare._--Also in a later scene of the same play:--'Thou
hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a
grammar-school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books
but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and,
contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a
paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee
that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no
Christian ear can endure to hear.'

P. 292. _Wesley._--'Next morning he was still better: ... he desired to
be drawn into the library, and placed by the central window, that he
might look down upon the Tweed. Here he expressed a wish that I should
read to him, and when I asked from what book, he said--"Need you ask?
There is but one."'--J. G. LOCKHART. _Life of Sir Walter Scott._

'It is our _duty_ to live among books, especially to live by ONE BOOK,
and a very old one.'--JOHN HENRY NEWMAN in _Tracts for the Times_.

P. 296. _De Vere._--Addison speaks of Horace and Pindar as showing, when
confronted with the Psalms, 'an absurdity and confusion of style,' and
'a comparative poverty of imagination'.

Coleridge has left on record his opinion that, 'after reading Isaiah or
St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, Homer and Virgil are disgustingly
tame to me, and Milton himself scarcely tolerable.'

Milton's own words may be recalled: 'There are no songs comparable to
the songs of Sion; no orations equal to those of the Prophets.'

P. 296. _Swift._--Compare Cowper in _Hope_:--

          In her own light arrayed,
    See mercy's grand apocalypse displayed!
    The sacred book no longer suffers wrong,
    Bound in the fetters of an unknown tongue;
    But speaks with plainness, art could never mend,
    What simplest minds can soonest comprehend.

Macaulay described the Bible as 'a book which, if everything else in our
language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of
its beauty and power'.

P. 297. _Arnold._--Wordsworth's opinion was that the prophetic and
lyrical parts of the Bible formed 'the great storehouse of enthusiastic
and meditative imagination'.

P. 297. _Faber._--Professor Huxley wrote in the _Contemporary Review_,
in his famous article on 'The School Boards':--'Consider the great
historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has been woven into
the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has
become the national epic of Britain, and is familiar to noble and
simple, from John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso
were once to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest
English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form; and,
finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to
be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilizations,
and of a great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the
oldest nations in the world.'

P. 299. _Eliot._--Maggie Tulliver, during the home troubles caused by
her father's bankruptcy, receives a present of books, among which is the
_Imitation of Christ_.

P. 304. _Gaskell._--The essay by Mrs. Gaskell, first published in
_Household Words_ in 1854, was suggested by an article by Victor Cousin
on Madame de Sablé in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Madame was a habitual
guest at the Hôtel Rambouillet and friend of the Duchess de Longueville;
her crowning accomplishment was the ability _tenir un salon_.

P. 311. _Alcuin._--Born at York in 735, Alcuin was the adviser of
Charlemagne, whose court, under the Englishman's direction became a
centre of culture. After fifteen years of court life at Aix-la-Chapelle
Alcuin retired to Tours, where he died in 804. His English name is given
as Ealwhine.

The catalogue refers to the library of Egbert, Archbishop of York. The
translator is D. McNicoll.

P. 311. _King._--This is an extract from a poem of 1,500 lines preserved
in vol. iii of Nichols's _Poems_, where it is said to be probably by Dr.
W. King. It first appeared in 1712. See p. 252.

P. 313. _Pope._--For the fate of the bonfire the reader is referred to
the _Dunciad_ itself. Pope explains that 'this library is divided into
three parts; the first consists of those authors from whom he (the
hero, i.e. Colley Cibber) stole, and whose works he mangled; the second,
of such as fitted the shelves, or were gilded for show, or adorned with
pictures; the third class our author calls solid learning, old Bodies of
Divinity, old Commentaries, old English Printers, or old English
Translations; all very voluminous, and fit to erect altars to Dulness'.
Tibbald, or Theobald, wrote _Shakespear Restored_; Ogilby, poet and
printer, is mentioned by Addison on p. 210; the Duchess of Newcastle was
responsible for eight folios of poetical and philosophical works;
Settle, the hero's brother Laureate 'for the city instead of the court';
Banks, his rival in tragedy; Broome, 'a serving man of Ben Jonson'; De
Lyra or Harpsfield, whose five volumes of commentaries in folio were
printed in 1472; Philemon Holland, 'the translator general of his age';
Cibber's Birthday Ode as Laureate.

William Caxton (1422-91), of course, printed, at Bruges, the first book
printed in English--the _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_--in 1474.
His printing press in Westminster was set up two years later. Wynkyn de
Worde, his servant and successor, started business on his own account in
1491.

P. 314. _Sterne._--'Sterne has generally concealed the sources of his
curious trains of investigation, and uncommon opinions, but in one
instance he ventured to break through his restraint by mentioning
Bouchet's _Evening Conferences_, among the treasures of Mr. Shandy's
library.... I have great reason to believe that it was in the Skelton
library some years ago, where I suspect Sterne found most of the authors
of this class. I entertain little doubt, that from the perusal of this
work, Sterne conceived the first precise idea of his _Tristram_, as far
as anything can be called precise, in a desultory book, apparently
written with great rapidity.'

This quotation is from Ferriar's _Illustrations of Sterne_, which was
published in 1798. He seemed, Sir Walter Scott wrote, 'born to trace and
detect the various mazes through which Sterne carried on his
depredations upon ancient and dusty authors.' Ferriar wrote the
following lines addressed to Sterne:--

    Sterne, for whose sake I plod through miry ways,
      Of antique wit and quibbling mazes drear,
      Let not thy shade malignant censure fear,
    Though aught of borrowed mirth my search betrays.
    Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days,
      (Erewhile to Guise or wanton Valois dear;)
      Till waked by thee in Skelton's joyous pile,
    She flung on Tristram her capricious rays;
      But the quick tear that checks our wondering smile,
    In sudden pause or unexpected story,
      Owns thy true mastery--and Le Fever's woes,
      Maria's wanderings, and the Prisoner's throes,
    Fix thee conspicuous on the throne of glory.

P. 315. _Scott._--The modern poet is Crabbe, and the context will be
found on p. 340; Thalaba is the name of Southey's hero.

P. 319. _Montaigne._--In another essay Montaigne tells us that his
library for a country library could pass for a very fair one.

P. 320. _Southey._--This extract is from Southey's _Sir Thomas More_; a
book of colloquies between Southey himself, under the name of
Montesinos, and the apparition of Sir T. More: who tells him that 'it is
your lot, as it was mine, to live during one of the grand climacterics
of the world', and that, 'I come to you, rather than to any other
person, because you have been led to meditate upon the corresponding
changes whereby your age and mine are distinguished, and because ...
there are certain points of sympathy and resemblance which bring us into
contact.' The colloquies are upon such subjects as the feudal and
manufacturing systems, the Reformation, prospects of Europe, infidelity,
trade.

Chartier was the French poet whose 'eternal glory' it was 'to have
announced the mission of Jeanne d'Arc'.

'Here are God's conduits,' &c., is from the first of Donne's _Satires_.

P. 324. _Barton._--The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859) formed a large
library at Benham, where he also devoted himself to gardening.

P. 325. _Bale._--'I was called to London to wait upon the Duke of
Norfolk, who having at my sole request bestowed the Arundelian Library
on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books and remove
them.... I procured for our Society, besides printed books, near 100
MSS., some in Greek, of great concernment. The printed books being of
the oldest impressions are not the less valuable; I esteem them almost
equal to MSS. Amongst them are most of the Fathers printed at Basle,
before the Jesuits abused them with their expurgatory Indexes; there is
a noble MS. of Vitruvius. Many of these books had been presented by
Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of Arundel and Dukes
of Norfolk; and the late magnificent Earl of Arundel bought a noble
library in Germany, which is in this collection. I should not, for the
honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these,
had I not seen how negligent he was of them, suffering the priests and
everybody to carry away and dispose of what they pleased, so that
abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.'--J. EVELYN (_Diary_,
August 29, 1678.)

P. 326. _Whittier._--Sung at the opening of the library at Haverhill,
Mass.

P. 334. _Helps._--Pope's _Essay on Man_:

    If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
    The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.

The other allusions are to Johnson, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.

P. 337. _Crabbe._--It is explained by Crabbe that while composing 'The
Library' he 'was honoured with the notice and assisted by the advice of
the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: part of it was written in his
presence, and the whole submitted to his judgement; receiving, in its
progress, the benefit of his correction'. The poem was published in
1781.

P. 354. _Saxe._--Aristophanes' _The Clouds_, ridiculing Socrates.

P. 355. _Drummond._--Of Sir Thomas Bodley old Anthony Wood says: 'Though
no writer, worth the remembrance, yet hath he been the greatest promoter
of learning that hath yet appeared in our nation.'

It may be recalled that R. de Bury had a fine idea, although it did not
fructify, to wit:--'We have for a long time held a rooted purpose in the
inmost recesses of our mind, looking forward to a favourable time and
divine aid, to found, in perpetual alms, and enrich with the necessary
gifts, a certain Hall in the revered University of Oxford, the first
nurse of all the liberal Arts; and further to enrich the same, when
occupied by numerous scholars, with deposits of our books, so that the
books themselves and every one of them may be made common as to use and
study, not only to the scholars of the said Hall, but through them to
all the students of the aforesaid University for ever.'

P. 357. _Cowper._--'This ode,' Cowper states, 'is rendered without
rhime, that it might more adequately represent the original, which, as
Milton himself informs us, is of no certain measure. It may possibly for
this reason disappoint the reader, though it cost the writer more labour
than the translation of any other piece in the whole collection.'

P. 360. _Cowley._--

    Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
    His moral pleases, not his pointed wit.
    Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art!
    But still I love the language of his heart.--POPE.

P. 368. _J. M._--It cannot escape observation that Bodley and his
library has been a much more fruitful theme than the University of
Cambridge. This is the only poem on the latter subject which I have been
able to find; it is quoted in Edwards's _Memoirs of Libraries_. Leigh
Hunt has related his experiences in the library of Trinity College 'when
the keeper of it was from home'; see p. 279.

P. 368. _Whitelocke._--The authorship of this fine testimony is
attributed to Whitelocke, but I have not traced it, by J. K. Hoyt and
Anna L. Ward.




INDEX OF AUTHORS

MENTIONED, ALLUDED TO, OR QUOTED IN THE TEXT AND NOTES


Abelard, 112, 381.

Accius, 104.

Addison, 14, 29, 60, 75, 80, 119, 128, 145, 209, 211, 266, 366, 367,
375, 377, 395.

Aelian, 90, 206.

Aeschylus, 104, 117, 259, 355.

Aëtius, 90.

Agrippa, Cornelius, 6.

Akenside, 283.

Alcott, 6.

Alcuin, 311, 396.

Alison, 387.

Allestree, 214, 390.

Alphonsus (Alonso), of Aragon, 65, 109, 241, 287, 376.

Amory, 276, 395.

Anacreon, 23, 250, 266, 355.

Andrewes, 130.

Antimachus, 222.

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 59, 64, 276, 292.

Arblay d', 20, 87, 253, 378, 393.

Ariosto, 73, 154, 248, 301.

Aristophanes, 73, 104, 222, 329, 355, 377, 391, 399.

Aristotle, 14, 20, 50, 60, 64, 127, 131, 144, 152, 153, 216, 308.

Armstrong, 127.

Arnobius, 89.

Arnold, M., 297, 379, 380, 385.

Arnold, T., 390.

Arvine, 331.

Ascham, 77, 138, 207, 259, 282, 377.

Augustine, St., 29, 90, 102, 199, 290.

Aurelius, Marcus, 20, 111.

Austen, Jane, 87, 382.

Avicenna, 90.

Aylmer, 207.


Bacon, Francis, 16, 22, 30, 46, 65, 74, 97, 113, 124, 131, 132, 141,
157, 280, 287, 322, 325, 334, 382, 398.

Bailey, N., 382.

Bailey, P. J., 5.

Baker, 210, 389.

Bale, 325.

Banks, 313, 397.

Barclay, 218, 390.

Barnes, 173.

Barros, 5, 370.

Barrow, 3.

Barton, 324.

Baxter, 84, 108, 145, 331, 378.

Bayle, 111, 211, 282.

Bayly, 88.

Beaconsfield. _See_ Disraeli.

Beattie, 18.

Beaumont, 103.

Beaumont and Fletcher, 73, 167, 204, 245, 254, 377.

Bede, 136, 331.

Beecher, 364.

Bellarmine, 64, 276, 343.

Benlowe, 383.

Bentley, 116, 376.

Beresford, 225, 242, 391.

Bettinelli, 154, 384.

Beza, 102, 250, 392.

Birrell, 374, 386.

Blackie, 162.

Blackmore, 116.

Blanchard, 192, 280.

Blount, 119.

Blundeville, 377.

Boccaccio, 31, 144, 233.

Boerhaave, 108.

Boileau, 372, 376.

Bonaventura, 276.

Boston, 135.

Boswell, 48, 128, 148, 153, 170, 247, 384.

Bouchet, 224, 314, 397.

Boyle, 376.

Brant, 216, 390.

Brontë, C., 382.

Brooke, Lord. _See_ Greville.

Broome, 282, 313, 397.

Browne, Sir T., 30, 58, 62, 75, 169, 276, 278, 323, 386.

Browne, Sir W., 113, 381.

Browning, E. B., 39, 159, 205, 206, 259, 318, 385.

Browning, R., 205, 236, 257.

Bruce, 96.

Bruscambille, 70.

Brydges, G., Lord Chandos, 149, 384.

Buchanan, 64.

Buckingham. _See_ Sheffield.

Bulwer. _See_ Lytton.

Bunyan, 70, 97, 248, 282, 292, 293, 317, 382, 384.

Burke, 28, 86, 103, 135, 378, 399.

Burns, 136, 249, 283, 298, 300.

Burton, J. H., 18, 134, 235, 391, 392.

Burton, R., 26, 40, 51, 89, 245, 276, 278, 283, 290, 356, 373, 378, 386.

Bury, R. de, 13, 43, 203, 239, 240, 273, 399.

Butler, J., 30, 93, 131, 147.

Butler, S., 151, 372, 383.

Butler, S., 330.

Byron, 52, 71, 95, 135, 198, 202, 268, 334, 373, 376, 386, 393, 398.


Caesar, 43, 114, 164.

Calprenède, La, 210, 212, 389.

Calverley, 135, 383.

Camden, 64.

Campbell, 281.

Campion, 261.

Cardan, 290.

Cardwell, 331.

Carlyle, 42, 52, 109, 112, 295, 369, 375, 380.

Cary, 388.

Castanheda, 5, 370.

Catullus 44, 98.

Cervantes, 31, 53, 93, 117, 132, 155, 188, 207, 231, 382, 383, 384, 385.

Chandos. _See_ Brydges.

Channing, 19, 60, 156, 372.

Chapman, 100, 101, 233, 372.

Chapone, 214, 390.

Charles (King), 90, 378.

Charron, 121.

Chartier, 321, 398.

Chaucer, 20, 22, 29, 62, 93, 103, 136, 169, 172, 180, 186, 207, 216,
233, 248, 266, 279, 301, 323, 327, 386, 387, 390.

Chesterfield. _See_ Stanhope.

Chesterton, 372.

Chrysostom, St., 290.

Churchill, 379.

Churchyard, 33.

Cibber, 313, 396, 397.

Cicero, 20, 23, 25, 41, 58, 60, 74, 183, 184, 219, 221, 296, 329, 382,
388.

Clarendon, 62, 322.

Cobbett, 86, 184, 378.

Cokain (Cokayne), 222.

Coke, 17, 281.

Coleridge, H., 246.

Coleridge, S. T., 5, 129, 153, 276, 278, 293, 375, 382, 384, 386, 395,
395.

Collier, 34, 323.

Colman, 281.

Colton, 6, 120, 123, 154, 159.

Comines, 208.

Congreve, 266.

Cook, Eliza, 177.

Corderius, 231.

Cornwall, Barry. _See_ Procter.

Coryat, 302.

Cotton, 282.

Courthope, 383.

Cousin, 396.

Cowley, 12, 14, 63, 136, 187, 295, 360, 399.

Cowper, 30, 81, 158, 208, 357, 396, 399.

Coxe, 52.

Crabbe, 26, 215, 281, 316, 317, 335, 337, 398.

Crashaw, 106, 200, 201, 381.

Crébillon, 378.

Cross, Mary Ann. _See_ Eliot.

Culpepper, 210.

Cureton, 331.

Curll, 380.

Cyprian, 89.


Dalton, 211.

Daniel, 46, 51, 195, 278, 374.

Dante, 20, 117, 165, 192, 384, 388, 396.

Davenant, 92.

Davies, 163.

Davila, 64.

Davy, 31, 41, 393.

Dawson, 309, 327.

Debrett, 263.

Defoe, 31, 179, 188, 281, 303, 382, 387.

De Lyra, 313, 397.

Democritus, 355.

Demosthenes, 156.

Denham, 33, 373.

Dennis, 251.

De Quincey, 36, 61, 93.

Descartes, 63.

Despreaux, 63.

D'Estrades, 211.

Dibdin, 227, 228, 247, 388, 391.

Dickens, 188, 272, 382, 387.

Digby, 169, 386.

Dillingham, 390.

Dillon, W., Earl of Roscommon, 7.

Dion Cassius, 388.

Disraeli, B., Earl of Beaconsfield, 88, 99, 154.

D'Israeli, I., 226, 227, 235, 275, 391.

Dobson, 387.

Dodd, 15, 372.

Doddridge, 333, 336.

Dodson, 369.

Donne, 180, 190, 305, 322, 388, 398.

Dovaston, 253.

Drayton, 56, 100.

Drinkwater, 96.

Drummond, 47, 283, 300, 355.

Dryden, 22, 29, 63, 75, 86, 91, 106, 115, 136, 210, 212, 224, 233, 323,
380, 389, 390.

Du Bartas, 97.

Du Bellay, 224.

Dudley, Earl of. _See_ Ward.

Dumas, 258, 393.

Dunton, 378.

D'Urfé, 210.

D'Urfey, 115, 210, 252.

Dyer, 306.


Ealwhine. _See_ Alcuin.

Earle, 94, 114, 150, 219, 381.

Edgeworth, Maria, 87, 302, 378.

Edwards, 399.

Eliot, George, 260, 287, 299, 396.

Elliott, 7.

Emerson, 6, 21, 28, 29, 74, 99, 103, 111, 116, 122, 132, 133, 370, 373,
380.

Enfield, 249.

Ennius, 171, 180.

Epictetus, 219, 305.

Erasmus, 16, 123, 221, 375, 382.

Ernesti, 183.

Euclid, 64, 140, 260.

Euripides, 104.

Evelyn, 398.


Faber, 297, 365.

Fabricius, 43, 111.

Farquhar, 18, 167.

Felix, M., 89.

Ferriar, 220, 391, 397.

Fielding, H., 17, 70, 118, 129, 167, 188, 244, 366, 371, 377, 382.

Fielding, R., 210, 389.

Fields, 7, 370.

Fitzgerald, E., 389, 394.

Fitzgerald, Lord E., 302.

Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 385.

Fletcher, G., 106, 381.

Fletcher, J., 222, 305, 313. _See also_ Beaumont and Fletcher.

Fletcher, P., 106.

Florio, 373.

Foote, 282.

Fordyce, 214, 390.

Forster, 387.

Foster, 38, 332, 335, 336.

Fox, 246, 281.

Foxe, 322, 349.

Francis, 383.

Franklin, 19.

Frascatorius, 154.

Froissart, 208, 228.

Frost, 330, 331.

Fuller, 57, 62, 79, 142, 245, 375.


Galen, 90, 199.

Garnett, 95.

Garrick, 7, 384.

Garth, 115, 266.

Gaskell, 304, 396.

Gassendi, 63.

Gay, 86, 186, 250, 264, 265, 283, 374, 387, 394.

Gaye, 382.

Geber, 308.

Gibbon, 18, 135, 138, 183, 210, 310, 383, 387.

Giles, 331.

Gilfillan, 335.

Gilpin, 97.

Gissing, 40, 310.

Glanvill, 102, 118, 380, 384.

Glover, 282.

Godwin, 15, 83.

Goethe, 40, 165, 295, 370.

Goldsmith, 4, 67, 115, 186, 188, 244, 269, 282, 302, 366, 367.

Goodyer, 10, 370.

Gower, 180, 208.

Granville, 266.

Gratia, 388.

Gray, 283, 366, 367, 378, 382.

Greene, 288.

Greville, 277, 278.

Guiccardini, 64.


Hafiz, 132.

Hailes, Lord, 270.

Hale, 293.

Hales, 136.

Hall, John, 98, 164.

Hall, Joseph, 125, 170, 280, 331.

Haller, 308.

Hamilton, 140.

Hare, A. W. and J. C., 115, 121, 122, 131, 148, 156.

Harington, 114.

Harper, 222.

Harpsfield, 313, 397.

Harrison, 385.

Harvey, 63, 308.

Hazlitt, 49, 69, 71, 182, 189, 228, 229, 282, 372, 374, 376, 379.

Hedericus, 258.

Helps, 99, 334.

Helvicus, 136.

Hemans, 294.

Herbert, G., 136, 140, 201, 390.

Herd, 271, 394.

Herodotus, 64, 100, 117.

Herrick, 45, 77, 84, 242, 374, 390.

Herschel, 27, 87.

Hervey, 135.

Hesiod, 101.

Hilarius, 89.

Hill, 280.

Hill, Birkbeck, 384.

Hippocrates, 64, 108, 111.

Hobbes, 63, 158, 281.

Hoffmann, 228.

Hogg, 30, 281.

Holland, 313, 397.

Holmes, 74, 98, 118, 233, 258, 307, 309, 318, 374, 382, 386.

Home, 281.

Homer, 11, 20, 22, 23, 46, 49, 50, 52, 60, 64, 73, 90, 100, 101, 106,
116, 117, 127, 128, 134, 152, 154, 156, 171, 180, 190, 199, 221, 233,
251, 259, 260, 265, 266, 268, 279, 296, 297, 303, 355, 356, 395.

Hone, 269.

Hood, 29, 282.

Hookham, 263.

Horace, 20, 50, 62, 91, 98, 128, 134, 145, 154, 171, 177, 211, 221, 258,
265, 389, 394, 395.

Horne, 282, 385.

Howard, H., Earl of Surrey, 388.

Howell, 125, 198, 275.

Howitt, 205.

Hoyle, 52, 282.

Hughes, 282.

Hugo, 375.

Hume, 18, 49, 136, 178, 300.

Hunt, Leigh, 9, 16, 20, 50, 62, 95, 167, 187, 233, 248, 256, 278, 282,
294, 300, 301, 302, 305, 323, 372, 376, 399.

Huxley, 396.

Hyperius, 290.


Inglis, 371.

Irving, 9.

Isocrates, 207, 357.


Jackson, 62.

Jago, 212.

Jefferies, 101, 328.

Jenyns, 18.

Jerome, St., 51, 89, 199, 273, 388.

Jerrold, D., 12.

Jerrold, W., 393.

Jervas, 385.

Johnson, L., 366, 372.

Johnson, S., 37, 40, 60, 67, 86, 108, 109, 111, 128, 129, 138, 143, 148,
153, 170, 181, 183, 247, 281, 301, 334, 373, 374, 375, 378, 382, 384,
389, 393, 398.

Jonson, 10, 66, 73, 75, 76, 91, 101, 103, 105, 180, 204, 261, 295, 300,
377, 379, 380, 382, 397.

Josephus, 18, 58.

Julian, 20.

Jusserand, 379.

Juvenal, 17, 91, 210.


Keats, 100, 189, 335, 398.

Keble, 201.

Keddie, 384.

Kempis, 299, 323.

Killigrew, 121.

King, 252, 311, 393, 396.

Kingsley, 25, 83, 135.

Knight, 390.

Kotzebue, 116.

Kyd, 103.


Lactantius, 89.

La Ferte, 210.

La Fontaine, 67.

Lamb, 1, 17, 18, 30, 75, 76, 84, 121, 130, 170, 171, 244, 254, 255, 269,
274, 276, 280, 364, 366, 367, 369, 374, 393, 394, 395.

Landor, 21, 57, 66, 67, 95, 131, 186, 202, 312, 372.

Lang, 392.

Lardner, 171.

Law, 66, 209.

Lee, 212, 282, 390.

Leighton, 49.

Le Sage, 188, 306.

Leslie, 211, 389.

L'Estrange, 64.

Lewis, 263, 394.

Lingard, 331.

Livy, 64, 180.

Lobeira, 144, 182, 301, 385.

Locke, 74, 126, 138, 141, 181, 210, 227, 281, 387, 391.

Locker-Lampson, 374.

Lockhart, 298, 395.

Longfellow, 10, 20, 234, 286, 370.

Lorenzini, 154.

Lovelace, 222.

Lowe, R., Ld. Sherbrooke, 39.

Lowell, 75, 303, 370.

Lucan, 91, 104, 190, 356, 388.

Lucilius, 363.

Lucretius, 24, 128.

Lully, 18, 308.

Luther, 323, 343, 375.

Lyly, 43, 103, 304.

Lysias, 207.

Lytton, 22, 30, 42, 68, 135, 136, 143, 165, 329, 371, 375, 383.


M., J., 368.

Macaulay, 53, 73, 96, 117, 207, 232, 375, 382, 384, 387, 393, 396.

Maccreery, 243.

MacDonald, 370.

Mackenzie, 214.

Macpherson, 300.

Maginn, 271.

Magliabechi, 111, 228, 391, 393.

Maimon, 260.

Malebranche, 210.

Mallet, 152, 281.

Malone, 76, 245.

Malory, 77.

Mamurra, 199, 388.

Mancini, 33.

Manley, Mary, 210, 389.

Mariana, 64.

Marivaux, 378.

Marlowe, 103.

Martial, 20, 44.

Martineau, H., 382.

Marvell, 29, 167, 281.

Massinger, 136, 204.

Masson, 381.

Mather, 308, 331.

Maurice, 53, 161, 375, 385.

McNicoll, 396.

Mede, 211.

Meleager, 95.

Menander, 222.

Meredith, 378.

Messala, 128.

Michaelis, 228.

Mickle, 282.

Middleton, 183.

Midwinter, 222.

Migne, 330.

Mill, 92.

Milman, 310.

Milton, 1, 5, 16, 19, 22, 23, 30, 31, 36, 47, 50, 62, 63, 66, 83, 90,
97, 103, 105, 106, 127, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136, 154, 157, 170, 187,
244, 245, 248, 256, 279, 301, 355, 357, 369, 374, 378, 380, 392, 394,
395.

Mirandola, 111.

Mitford, 96, 398.

Molière, 31, 67, 313.

Montagu, 204.

Montaigne, 32, 44, 75, 90, 91, 121, 122, 133, 139, 144, 163, 182, 207,
218, 305, 306, 319, 323, 373, 377, 379, 380, 389, 398.

Montalvo, 385.

Montesquieu, 385.

Montgomery, 117.

Moore, 30, 196, 199, 280, 388.

More, Hannah, 86, 92, 378.

More, Sir T., 198, 320, 388, 398.

Moreri, 134.

Morley, Lord, 383, 385, 395.

Motteux, 374.

Müller, 390.

Mumby, 380, 394.

Musaeus, 100.


Newcastle, Duchess of, 244, 277, 313, 323, 397.

Newman, 369, 395.

Newton, 97, 210.

Nichols, 393, 396.

Nicolson, 375.

Norris, 142.

Norton, Caroline, 8.

Norton, J., 331.

Norton, J. B., 365.


Ogilby, 210, 313, 389, 397.

Ogle, 223.

O'Keefe, 167.

Oldham, 199.

Olivet, 183.

Orford. _See_ Walpole.

Oribasius, 90.

Orpheus of Thrace, 6.

Orr, Mrs. S., 392.

Ortelius, 136.

Osorio, 5, 370.

Overbury, 13.

Ovid, 14, 50, 144, 169, 182, 250, 265, 266, 382, 386.


Paccuvius, 104.

Paley, 18.

Papinian, 41.

Paracelsus, 18, 63, 199, 388.

Paraeus, 314.

Parnell, 86, 250, 392.

Parrot, 262.

Parsons, 322.

Pascal, 73.

Pasquin, 224.

Pastorini, 154.

Pater, 369, 393.

Patmore, 376, 384.

Pattison, 92, 394.

Payn, 168, 382.

Paynter, 222.

Peacham, 149, 241.

Peacock, 247.

Peignot, 235.

Pembroke, 210, 389.

Penn, 246.

Percy, 37.

Persius, 44.

Petrarch, 1, 20, 205, 249, 369, 384.

Petronius Arbiter, 91.

Philips, 251.

Pindar, 64, 190, 355, 388, 395.

Pineda, 59, 375.

Pinkerton, 270, 300, 392.

Piozzi, Mrs., 382.

Plato, 20, 22, 25, 28, 34, 41, 50, 64, 73, 116, 117, 133, 152, 156, 165,
296, 308, 309.

Plautus, 73, 104, 114, 183, 377.

Pliny, 20, 265, 378.

Plutarch, 20, 29, 90, 248, 362, 382.

Pollock, 116.

Polydore, 64.

Pope, 29, 50, 86, 114, 115, 121, 127, 136, 186, 233, 250, 267, 281, 297,
301, 313, 374, 380, 389, 394, 396, 398, 399.

Praed, 201.

Pregnitz, 314, 315.

Prideaux, 356.

Prior, 50, 186, 248, 266, 282, 323.

Proclus, 259, 260.

Procter, A. A., 238.

Procter, B. W., 8.

Propertius, 144.

Prynne, 383.

Ptolemy, 136.

Pulci, 62.

Pye, 280.


Quarles, 291, 313.

Quintilian, 180, 256.


Rabelais, 31, 41, 79, 144, 169, 171, 208, 236.

Racine, 73.

Radcliffe, Ann, 88.

Raleigh, 380.

Ramsay, 270.

Rantzau, 391.

Rawlinson, 267.

Regiomontanus, 64.

Reid, 282.

Richardson, 84, 181, 255, 323, 366, 367, 387.

Ritson, 270, 394.

Rive, 235.

Robertson, F. W., 165, 383.

Robertson, W., 18, 300.

Rochefoucauld, 99.

Rochester. _See_ Wilmot.

Rogers, 7, 282, 376.

Roscoe, 9, 370.

Roscommon. _See_ Dillon.

Rosenmuller, 228.

Ross, 183.

Rossi, 224.

Rousseau, 376.

Rowe, 281.

Ruskin, 54, 117, 159, 208, 254, 274, 326.


Sacheverell, 210.

Saintsbury, 381.

Sallust, 180.

Sannazarius, 154.

Sappho, 199, 222.

Savage, 281.

Saxe, 354.

Scaliger, 111.

Schiller, 31, 40.

Schoettgenius, 228.

Scott, Michael, 6.

Scott, Sir W., 30, 69, 71, 134, 135, 147, 187, 203, 231, 270, 300, 301,
315, 383, 384, 394, 395, 397.

Scotus, 64.

Scroderus, 314.

Scudéry, 210.

Selden, 100, 102, 111, 119.

Seneca, 37, 89, 90, 91, 104, 157, 210, 290, 296, 363, 382.

Settle, 313, 397.

Sewell, 323.

Shadwell, 252.

Shaftesbury, 17.

Shakespeare, 1, 5, 19, 21, 22, 30, 48, 55, 62, 66, 73, 75, 92, 101, 103,
104, 105, 117, 127, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 152, 159, 162, 164,
165, 189, 191, 194, 196, 198, 204, 207, 215, 219, 240, 242, 243, 244,
245, 248, 278, 279, 281, 283, 288, 289, 295, 298, 301, 306, 309, 310,
313, 316, 327, 355, 373, 374, 376, 377, 382, 387, 388, 395.

Sheffield, 127, 266.

Shelley, 165, 187, 294, 334, 335, 372, 387, 398.

Sherbrooke. _See_ Lowe.

Sheridan, C., 170.

Sheridan, R. B., 91, 213, 249, 379, 382.

Sheridan, T., 11, 370.

Sherlock, 210, 389.

Shirley, 26, 196, 222.

Sibbald, 271, 394.

Siddons, Mrs., 97.

Sidney, 62, 90, 180, 210, 245, 323, 379, 389.

Silius Italicus, 154.

Skelton, 241.

Slawkenbergius, 314.

Smith, Adam, 18, 97.

Smith, Alex., 11, 32.

Smith, S., 154, 264, 375, 385, 392, 394.

Smollett, 30, 70, 188, 213, 214, 244, 366, 367.

Socrates, 80, 355.

Sophocles, 104, 165.

Sotherne, 212, 214. 390.

South, 62, 80, 120, 158, 282, 378.

Southey, 4, 5, 28, 62, 130, 292, 316, 320, 323, 373, 385, 398.

Spencer, 385.

Spenser, 1, 5, 21, 22, 50, 56, 62, 103, 117, 130, 180, 186, 195, 205,
207, 223, 248, 266, 279, 280, 301, 302.

Spinoza, 167, 323.

Spizelius, 388.

Sprat, 280.

Staël, de, Mme., 279.

Stanhope, 4, 180, 214, 235, 246, 273.

Steele, 18, 37, 167, 210, 281, 302.

Stephen, 136.

Sterne, 3, 40, 167, 215, 244, 283, 302, 314, 366, 376, 397.

Stevenson, 174, 378.

Stirling-Maxwell. _See_ Norton, C.

Stockdale, 263.

Stoddard, 370.

Sturm, 135.

Suckling, 167, 281, 301.

Surrey, E. of. _See_ Howard.

Swift, 24, 31, 63, 67, 73, 94, 184, 186, 194, 249, 281, 296, 302, 303,
370, 376, 377, 396.

Sydenham, 108.

Sylvester, 156.

Symonds, 197, 379.


Tacitus, 382.

Talfourd, 395.

Tasso, 63, 251, 396.

Tate, 252.

Taylor, Bayard, 234, 392.

Taylor, 62, 210, 245, 282, 323.

Taylor, J., 77, 150, 289, 302.

Temple, 59, 63, 64, 69, 110, 210, 376.

Tennyson, 98, 165, 205, 289.

Terence, 73, 104, 183, 377.

Teresa, St., 106.

Thackeray, 89, 135, 153, 187, 369.

Theocritus, 233, 248.

Theophrastus, 199, 206.

Thomas, E. C, 371.

Thomson, J., 16, 86, 161, 244, 392.

Thomson, R., 284.

Thurloe, 69.

Tibbald (Theobald), 313, 397.

Tibullus, 128.

Tickle, 175, 282, 387.

Tillotson, 37, 380.

Tooke, 129, 282.

Trapp, 113, 381.

Trench, 160.

Tully. _See_ Cicero.

Tupper, 12, 370.

Turner, 82.


Urquhart, 374.


Valcarenghus, 17.

Varro, 89, 114.

Vaughan, 13, 284, 290, 362.

Verburgius, 183.

Vere, 296, 395.

Verulam. _See_ Bacon.

Victorinus, 89.

Virgil, 20, 49, 60, 64, 73, 98, 101, 106, 127, 134, 138, 152, 154, 180,
183, 209, 210, 250, 251, 265, 268, 296, 308, 329, 382, 389, 395.

Vitruvius, 241, 398.

Voltaire, 24, 59, 81, 84, 107, 341, 376, 381.

Vossius, 64.


Walker, 281.

Wall, 211.

Waller, 2, 66, 146, 149, 249, 266.

Walpole, 7, 116, 169, 223, 264, 376.

Walton, 62, 276.

Warburton, 204.

Ward, 135.

Ward, J. W., 72.

Warton, 388.

Watts, 139.

Webster, 204, 276.

Welsted, 371.

Wesley, 291, 292.

West, 282.

West, A. S., 381.

White, G., 301.

Whitelocke, 368, 399.

Whittier, 7, 326, 370, 398.

Wierus, 16.

Wilkins, 64.

Wilmot, 39, 372.

Wilson, 171, 387.

Wingate, 212.

Wirgmann, 140.

Wither, 63, 78, 94, 262, 393.

Wolff, 260.

Wood, 399.

Wollstonecraft, M., 279.

Wordsworth, 7, 21, 132, 165, 172, 184, 205, 282, 373, 375, 382, 395,
396.

Wotton, 376.

Wyatt, 388.


Xenophon, 101, 184, 382.


Young, 93, 219.


Zimmerman, 277.