The Book-Lovers' Anthology
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Title: The Book-Lovers' Anthology
Editor: R. M. Leonard
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK-LOVERS' ANTHOLOGY ***
THE BOOK-LOVERS'
ANTHOLOGY
[Illustration: LEARNING'S PANTHEON: THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD]
THE BOOK-LOVERS'
ANTHOLOGY
EDITED BY
R. M. LEONARD
'Here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and
have put nothing of mine into it but the thred to binde them.'
MONTAIGNE (Florio's translation)
[Illustration]
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
1911
OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
One of the most delightful of the _Last Essays of Elia_ is entitled
'Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading', a title which would serve very
well to indicate the contents of this anthology. In bringing together
into one volume the tributes and opinions of a galaxy of writers, my
object has been the glorification of books as books, a book being
regarded as a real and separate entity, and often as an end in itself.
There is a wide circle to whom this collection should appeal, in
addition to bibliomaniacs or mere collectors of first or rare editions
to whom the contents are often anathema, for the love of books is not
confined to scholars or great readers. This love is incommunicable: it
comes, but happily seldom goes, as the wind which bloweth where it
listeth; it is perfectly sincere, and knows nothing of conventions and
sham admirations.
No greater lover of books has ever lived than that Englishman who was
born at Bury St. Edmunds seven hundred and thirty years ago--Richard de
Bury, Bishop of Durham, author of _Philobiblon_, and, as Lord Campbell
said, undoubtedly the founder of the order of book-lovers in England.
Centuries passed, and then the more modern worship of books was promoted
by one of even higher station than this lord chancellor and lord high
treasurer of England--by King James, whom sycophants and cynics called
the British Solomon. The sixteenth century saw also the births of
Bacon, Burton, and Florio, the inspired translator of Montaigne, and Ben
Jonson, who all deserved well of the order. Milton, with prose and
poetry, handed down the sacred fire in the seventeenth century, and his
soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart.
Dr. Johnson, nearly a hundred years later, filled a niche of his own,
irreverent though he was to books except for their message. The latter
half of the eighteenth century is especially memorable, for it
synchronized with the early years of Southey, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, the
very temples of the spirit which I have sought to enshrine in these
pages, and of Hazlitt, and of two who should be dear to librarians,
Crabbe and John Foster. I should like to claim an honoured place in the
nineteenth century for Bulwer Lytton, who, although he understood 'the
merits of a spotless shirt', understood books also and appreciated them
thoroughly; and for the Brownings, especially the author of _Aurora
Leigh_. Emerson is conspicuous, not only as a book-lover, but also as a
professor of books, and as a missionary in the sense that Carlyle and
Ruskin preached the gospel of books. Many others deserve honourable
mention, but I must pass on to some of those who adorn the present day.
It would have been very pleasant to have seen Lord Morley, Mr. Frederic
Harrison, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Andrew Lang, and Mr.
Augustine Birrell appearing in this cloud of witness, but happily they
are alive to testify to the faith that is in them, and for that reason
are beyond the scope of an anthology confined to authors who are dead.
It may be pointed out that there has been an increasing tendency to
write not so much about books as about the authors of books; but to have
included literary criticism, except incidentally, would have increased
this volume to prodigious size. While I have been obliged for the same
reason to ignore, as a rule, individual volumes, an exception has been
made of the Bible, which is itself a library, and this is justified by
the fact that many pages are devoted to libraries. Scores of poems have
been prefixed to volumes or addressed in apology to possible readers,
but these, and colophons, interesting though they may be, do not fit in
with my scheme. However tempting it seemed to give versions of Catullus,
Horace, or Martial, translations from ancient classic writers have been
excluded; but room has been found for classic writers of comparatively
modern times, for it would have been ridiculous to have passed over, for
example, Montaigne, whose immortal essays have been handed down in the
splendid English dress of John Florio's design. For the rest, the
contents of this volume, in which more than 200 authors bear their
varying testimony, must speak for themselves.
The passages will be found grouped more or less according to subjects,
though the dividing lines are fine, and chronological order within the
limits of the groups has been a secondary consideration. After forewords
by Lamb, the anthology deals with books as companions, the love of and
delight in books, the immortality of books and the immortality which
they convey, the multiplicity of books and the distraction of choice;
ancient and modern books and their respective claims; books that are or
may be thought injurious; novels and romances; bookmaking of various
kinds--plagiarism, books about books, anthologies, abridgements,
dedications, presentation copies, bibliographies, translations, and
quotations; books and preachers, and books as 'the true university of
these days'; critics and criticism; rules for reading,
commonplace-books, abstracts, epitomes, and marginalia; casual and
superficial reading, talking from books, brains turned by books,
over-reading; books and life; books as an enemy to health and as
pharmaceutical preparations for mental indisposition; reading in bed, at
meal-times, and out-of-doors, and the call of the book of nature; the
horn-book and other books for children; advice on youthful reading, and
the early preferences of some notable book-lovers; love and literature,
and the conflict between matrimony and the library; women and books and
libraries; the human species of book-worms, bibliomaniacs, and pedants;
the proper handling of books; bindings, book illustrations, &c.; book
pests--worms and moths; 'finds' at second-hand bookshops and what Leigh
Hunt calls 'bookstall urbanity'; booksellers and publishers; mammon and
books; book borrowers and book borrowing; bookish similes; books for
magic; the Bible; literary geography; libraries--as studies and keys to
character, private libraries real and imaginary, public libraries--from
the provincial reference library to the British Museum, reflections in
libraries, Crabbe's masterpiece, the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge
with fitting tributes to Bodley; and, finally, a memorable tribute to
books and the priceless treasury that a library affords. The source of
the quotations is generally given; and the index of authors quoted or
referred to, together with a full list of contents, and, it is hoped,
the notes, should serve the convenience of the reader.
Many years ago Mr. Alexander Ireland gave me a copy of _The Book-Lover's
Enchiridion_, and my debt to that 'treasury of thoughts on the Solace
and Companionship of Books' is great. Mr. Ireland's object was 'to
present, in chronological order, a selection of the best thoughts of the
greatest and wisest minds on the subject of Books--their solace and
companionship--their efficacy as silent teachers and guides--and the
comfort, as of a living presence, which they afford amidst the changes
of fortune and the accidents of life.' In this volume I have taken the
subject and myself less seriously than would have been possible to Mr.
Ireland. The 'thoughts' which I have collected are more 'detached', and
they cover a wider field. I am under much obligation also to the
_Ballads of Books_, which Mr. Brander Matthews compiled nearly a quarter
of a century ago and Mr. Andrew Lang recast, and to Mr. W. Roberts's
_Book-Verse_. Mainly, however, I have relied upon my own personal
reading--'blessing,' as Lamb said, 'my stars for a taste so catholic, so
unexcluding'--and upon research, in which I have had invaluable
assistance from friends and colleagues. I am fortunately able to include
many copyright pieces, and I have to thank the following for the
necessary permission:--
Messrs. G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., for B. W. Procter's autobiographical
fragment, 'My Books'; Messrs. Chapman & Hall, for what I have taken from
a contribution to the _Fortnightly Review_ by Mark Pattison, and for the
passage from Carlyle's _Historical Sketches_; Messrs. Chatto & Windus,
for the poems by Laman Blanchard, also for the passage from R.
Jefferies' _Life of the Fields_; and Messrs. Macmillan & Co., for the
excerpt from the same author's _The Dewy Morn_; Messrs. Constable &
Co., and the executors of the late George Gissing, for the passages from
_The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_; Mr. A. C. Fifield, for Samuel
Butler's whimsical irreverence quoted from _Quis Desiderio_; Mr. Edward
Garnett, for Richard Garnett's poem; the Houghton Mifflin Co., for
Whittier's 'The Library'; Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for R. L.
Stevenson's 'Picture Books in Winter' (and Messrs. Charles Scribner's
Sons in respect of copyright in America); Mr. Elkin Mathews, for Lionel
Johnson's poem; Messrs. G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., for Longfellow's 'My
Books', and 'Bayard Taylor' (and the Houghton Mifflin Co. in respect of
copyright in America); Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., for J. A. Symonds's
poem from _Lyrics of Life_; and Dr. A. Stoddart Walker, for permission
to quote from J. S. Blackie's _Self-Culture_.
In _Guesses at Truth_ the brothers Hare wrote: 'They who cannot weave a
uniform net, may at least produce a piece of patchwork, which may be
useful, and not without a charm of its own.' It is my modest ambition
that book-lovers shall find this volume useful and not without charm.
R. M. LEONARD.
CONTENTS
ADDISON, JOSEPH (1672-1719).
The Legacies of Genius 14
The Authors' Advantage 60
The evil that Men do 80
A great Book is a great evil 119
Chance Readings 145
A Lady's Library 209
Books for a Lady's Library 211
ALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON (1799-1888).
The Fellowship of Books 6
ALCUIN or EALWHINE (735-804).
An Episcopal Library 311
ARBLAY, FRANCES, MADAME D' (1752-1840).
Royal Patronage of Books 253
ARMSTRONG, JOHN (1709-79).
Read without Prejudice 127
ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822-88).
The Grand Mine of Diction 297
ASCHAM, ROGER (1515-68).
Books that do Hurt 77
Epitomes 138
_ATHENIAN MERCURY, THE_
Whether 'tis lawful to read Romances 85
AUNGERVILE. _See_ BURY.
AUSTEN, JANE (1775-1817).
Only a Novel 87
BACON, FRANCIS, LORD VERULAM AND VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS
(1561-1626).
Enduring Monuments 46
Old Authors to Read 65
Dedications 97
'Books will speak plain' 113
Studies 124
Commonplace Books 141
Over-reading 157
A great Necromancer 287
The Shrines of the Ancient Saints 325
BAILEY, PHILIP JAMES (1816-1902).
'Worthy Books' 5
BALE, JOHN, BISHOP OF OSSORY (1495-1563).
A most Horrible Infamy 325
BARCLAY, ALEXANDER (1475?-1552).
Envoy to Fools 218
BARNES, WILLIAM (1801-86).
Learning 173
BARROW, ISAAC (1630-77).
He that loveth a Book will never want 3
BARTON, BERNARD (1784-1849).
Composed in the Rev. J. Mitford's Library 324
BAXTER, RICHARD (1615-91).
Romances are Pernicious 84
Books preferred to Preachers 108
BAYLY, THOMAS HAYNES (1797-1839).
A Novel of High Life 88
BEACONSFIELD, EARL OF. _See_ DISRAELI, BENJAMIN.
BEECHER, HENRY WARD (1813-1887).
The Bodleian: a Dead Sea of Books 364
BERESFORD, JAMES (1764-1840).
Bibliosophia 225
Eye-worship 242
BLACKIE, JOHN STUART (1809-95).
Overrating the Value of Books 162
BLANCHARD, SAMUEL LAMAN (1804-45).
The Double Lesson 192
The Art of Book-keeping 280
BLOUNT, CHARLES (1654-93).
The Imprimatur 119
BOSWELL, JAMES (1740-95). _See also_ JOHNSON.
Shakespeare in Heaven 48
Reading according to Inclination 128
Johnson's Cursory Reading 148
Talking from Books 153
The Dog and the Bone 170
Books you may hold in your hand 247
BRANT, SEBASTIAN (1458-1521).
The Chief Fool 216
BROWNE, SIR THOMAS (1605-82).
Superfluous Books 58
BROWNE, SIR WILLIAM (1692-1774).
Oxford and Cambridge: an Epigram 113
BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT (1806-61).
'Books are men of higher stature' 39
Reading as Intellectual Indolence 159
The Poets 205
The World of Books 206
A Forced Sale 259
The Library in the Garret 318
BROWNING, ROBERT (1812-89).
Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis 236
The Find 257
BRYDGES, GREY, LORD CHANDOS (1579?-1621).
The greatest Clerks be not always the wisest Men 149
BUCKINGHAM, DUKE OF. _See_ SHEFFIELD.
BULWER. _See_ LYTTON, LORD.
BUNYAN, JOHN (1628-88).
The Scriptures: what are they? 292
BURNEY, FANNY. _See_ ARBLAY.
BURNS, ROBERT (1759-96).
The Bookworms 249
The big Ha'-Bible 298
BURTON, JOHN HILL (1809-81).
A Sense of Humour 18
A Course of Reading 134
Definitions 235
BURTON, ROBERT (1577-1640).
An extraordinary Delight to study 26
'Though they write _contemptu gloriae_' 51
Every Man his Due 89
Read the Scriptures 290
To be chained with good Authors 356
BURY, RICHARD DE, BISHOP OF DURHAM (1281-1345).
The Desirable Tabernacle 13
Books as Memorials 43
Woman and Books 203
Of Handling Books 239
Deductions from Scripture 240
Mammon and Books 273
BUTLER, JOSEPH (1692-1752).
The Habit of Casual Reading 147
BUTLER, SAMUEL (1612-80).
Superficial Readers 151
BUTLER, SAMUEL (1835-1902).
Books in a New Light 330
BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, LORD (1788-1824).
A Lasting Link of Ages 52
''Tis pleasant, sure' 95
Love and the Library 198
To Mr. Murray 268
CALVERLEY, CHARLES STUART (1831-84).
Of Reading 135
CAMPION, THOMAS (1567?-1620).
The Writer to his Book 261
CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795-1881).
The Miraculous Art of Writing 42
The Virtue of a True Book 52
The Real Working Effective Church 109
The True University of These Days 112
A Very Priceless Thing 295
CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL DE (1547-1616).
'There is no Book so bad' 117
The Burning of Don Quixote's Books 155
CHANDOS, LORD. _See_ BRYDGES.
CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY (1780-1842).
Books the True Levellers 19
The Diffusion of Books and its Effect upon Culture 60
Folly generated by Books 156
CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (1340 ?-1400).
To Drive the Night Away 169
Farewell to Books in Springtime 172
The Oxford Scholar and his Books 216
CHESTERFIELD EARL OF. _See_ STANHOPE.
CHURCHYARD, THOMAS (1520 ?-1604).
Books is Nurse to Truth 33
COBBETT, WILLIAM (1762-1835).
The Danger of Poets and Romances 86
A Birth of Intellect 184
COLERIDGE, HARTLEY (1796-1849).
Suitable Bindings 246
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-1834).
Books as Fruitful Trees 129
Reading to kill Time 153
The Pilgrim's Progress 293
COLLIER, JEREMY (1650-1726).
Of the Entertainment of Books 34
COLTON, CHARLES CALEB (1780 ?-1832).
'We should choose our Books' 6
'There are many Books written' 120
Readers and Writers 123
Title-readers 154
Books and Men 159
COOK, ELIZA (1818-89).
Old Story Books 177
'CORNWALL, BARRY.' _See_ PROCTER, B. W.
COWLEY, ABRAHAM (1618-67).
'May I a small house' 12
Material for Poesy 295
Pindaric Ode 360
COWPER, WILLIAM (1731-1800).
Books bad and good 81
Swallowing the Husks 158
'Twere well with most, if Books' 208
An Ode to Mr. John Rouse (translated from Milton) 357
CRABBE, GEORGE (1754-1832).
The Prouder Pleasures of the Mind 26
The Old Bachelor's Books 21
The Peasant's Library 317
The Library 337
CRASHAW, RICHARD (1613 ?-49).
Upon the Book of St. Teresa 106
On a Prayer-Book sent to Mrs. M. R. 200
On George Herbert's _The Temple_, sent to a Gentlewoman 201
CROSS, MARY ANN. _See_ ELIOT.
DANIEL, SAMUEL (1562-1619).
Immortality in Books 46
O Blessed Letters 51
To the Countess of Bedford 195
DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321).
Love's Purveyor 192
DAVENANT, SIR WILLIAM (1606-68).
Hidden Treasure 92
DAVIES, SIR JOHN (1569-1626).
What profits it 163
DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY (1778-1829).
Permanence for Thought 41
DAWSON, GEORGE (1821-76).
The Consulting-room of a Wise Man 309
The Reference Library 327
DENHAM, SIR JOHN (1615-69).
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use 33
DE QUINCEY, THOMAS (1785-1859).
Instruction or Amusement 36
The Distraction of Choice 61
DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL (1776-1847).
An Unworthy Professor 227
A Bibliomaniac 228
Book Illustrations and Nightmare 247
DICKENS, CHARLES (1812-70).
Early Reading 188
What a Heart-breaking Shop 272
DIGBY, SIR KENELM (1603-65).
Reading in Bed 169
DILLON, WENTWORTH, EARL OF ROSCOMMON (1633 ?-85).
'Choose an author as you choose a friend' 7
DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD (1804-81).
'Lady Constance guanoed her mind' 88
Biography preferred to History 99
'The author who speaks about his own Books' 154
D'ISRAELI, ISAAC (1766-1848).
Golden volumes! richest treasures 226
A Malady of weak Minds 227
Accidents to Books 275
DODD, WILLIAM (1729-77).
In Prison 15
DONNE, JOHN (1573-1631).
Valediction to his Book 190
The Library and the Grave 305
DOVASTON, JOHN FREEMAN MILWARD (1782-1854).
The Cure for Bookworms 253
DRAYTON, MICHAEL (1563-1631).
Immortality in Song 56
Translations from the Classics 100
DRUMMOND, WILLIAM (1585-1649).
The Strange Quality of Books 47
The Book of Nature 283
Of Libraries: The Bodleian 355
DRYDEN, JOHN (1631-1700).
A Learned Plagiary 91
Under Mr. Milton's Picture 106
DUDLEY, EARL OF. _See_ WARD.
DYER, GEORGE (1755-1841).
'Libraries are the wardrobes of literature' 306
EALWHINE. _See_ ALCUIN.
EARLE, JOHN, BISHOP OF SALISBURY (1601 ?-65).
'His Invention is no more' 94
A Critic 114
A Pretender to Learning 150
An Antiquary 219
'ELIOT, GEORGE' (1819-80).
The Vocation 260
'Wise books, For half the truths they hold' 287
Of _The Imitation of Christ_ 299
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803-82).
A Company of the Wisest and the Wittiest 6
The Theory of Books 21
The Book the Highest Delight 28
The pleasure derived from Books 29
Our Debt to a Book 29
A Sort of Third Estate 74
On Reading Translations 99
Merit in Quotation 103
The Need of a Guide to Books 111
The Final Verdict upon Books 116
'Talent alone cannot make a writer' 116
Reading between Lines 122
Rules for Reading 132
A Diet of Books 133
ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS (1466 ?-1536).
The Royal Road 123
FABER, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1814-63).
The English of the Bible 297
A College Library 365
FERRIAR, JOHN (1761-1815).
The Bibliomania 220
FIELDING, HENRY (1707-54).
The filial piety of Books 118
FLETCHER, JOHN (1579-1625).
The Library a Glorious Court 305
FLETCHER, PHINEAS (1582-1650).
Upon my Brother's Book 106
FOSTER, JOHN (1770-1843).
The Influence of Books 38
Reflections in a Library 332
FULLER, THOMAS (1608-61).
The Multiplicity of Books 57
Printers gain by bad Books 79
'A commonplace Book contains many notions' 142
GARNETT, RICHARD (1835-1906).
Our master, Meleager 95
GASKELL, ELIZABETH CLEGHORN (1810-65).
Books for the Salon 304
GAY, JOHN (1685-1732).
The Elephant and the Bookseller 264
On a Miscellany of Poems 265
GIBBON, EDWARD (1737-94).
Abstracts of Books 138
Early Reading 183
Women's Want 210
GILFILLAN, GEORGE (1813-78).
The True Poem on the Library 335
GISSING, GEORGE (1857-1903).
The Mood for Books 40
The Scent of Books 310
GLANVILL, JOSEPH (1636-80).
'That silly vanity of impertinent citations' 102
The Mote and the Beam 118
GODWIN, WILLIAM (1756-1836).
The Depositary of everything honourable 15
Bad Books and debauched Minds 83
GOLDSMITH, OLIVER (1728-74).
Sweet Unreproaching Companions 4
The Reading of New Books 67
Literary Hypocrisy 115
'I love everything that is old' 269
GREENE, ROBERT (1558-92).
Books for Magic 288
HALE, SIR MATTHEW (1609-76).
No Book like the Bible 293
HALES, JOHN (1584-1656).
The Method of reading profane History 136
HALL, JOHN (1627-56).
Men in their Nightgowns 98
When to Read 164
HALL, JOSEPH, BISHOP OF EXETER AND NORWICH (1574-1656).
How to spend our Days 125
Reading and Meal Times 170
On the Sight of a Great Library 331
HAMILTON, SIR WILLIAM (1788-1856).
Underscoring 140
HARE, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM (1792-1834), and JULIUS CHARLES HARE (1795-1855).
In the Seat of the Scorner 115
Books of One Thought 121
Purple Patches 122
Books that provoke Thought 131
Desultory Reading 148
Brains squashed by Books 156
HARINGTON, SIR JOHN (1561-1612).
Against writers that carp 114
HAZLITT, WILLIAM (1778-1830).
The only Things that last for ever 49
On Reading Old Books 69
On Reading New Books 71
The best Books the commonest 182
The visionary Gleam 189
The enviable Bookworm 228
Ears nailed to Books 229
HELPS, SIR ARTHUR (1813-75).
Biography 99
Thoughts in a Library 334
HEMANS, FELICIA DOROTHEA (1793-1835).
To a Family Bible 294
HERBERT, GEORGE (1593-1633).
The Parson's Accessory Knowledge 140
HERRICK, ROBERT (1591-1674).
To His Book 45
'Thou art a plant.'
'Make haste away.'
'If hap it must.'
'The bound, almost.'
'Go thou forth.'
His Prayer for Absolution 77
Virginibus Puerisque 84
Lines have their linings, and Books their buckram 242
HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM (1792-1871).
A Taste to be Prayed For 27
Novels as Engines of Civilization 87
HOBBES, THOMAS (1588-1679).
'If I had read as much as other men' 158
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL (1809-94).
Old and New Books 74
Presentation Copies 98
'The foolishest Book' 118
The Literary Harem 233
Purchasing an Act of Piety 258
The Study 307
The Library as a Key to Character 309
'Every library should try to be complete' 318
HOOD, THOMAS (1799-1845).
Rich Fare 29
HOWELL, JAMES (1594?-1666).
The Choice of Books 125
Marriage and Books 198
The Value of Book Borrowing 275
HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH (1784-1859).
On Parting with my Books 9
Love that is large 16
Authors as Lovers of Books 20
The Authors' Metamorphosis 50
A Library of One 62
A Literatura Hilaris 167
Early Reading 187
Kissing a Folio 233
Delight in Book-Prints 248
The Second-hand Catalogue 256
Borrowing and Lending 278
Wedded to Books 278
The Book of Books 294
Literary Geography 300
Scotland 300
England 301
Ireland 302
The Library as Study 305
Charles Lamb's Library 323
IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783-1859).
True Friends that Cheer 9
JAGO, RICHARD (1715-81).
To a Lady furnishing her Library 212
JEFFERIES, RICHARD (1848-87).
When Translations are to be preferred 101
In the British Museum Library 328
JERROLD, DOUGLAS WILLIAM (1803-57).
'A blessed companion is a Book' 12
JOHNSON, LIONEL (1869-1902).
Oxford Nights 366
JOHNSON, SAMUEL (1709-84). _See also_ BOSWELL.
Why Books are Read 37
An ignorant Age hath many Books 60
The Moons of Literature 67
Books of Morality 108
The Secret Influence of Books 109
Dead Counsellors are safest 109
Reading According to Inclination 128
Marginal Notes and Commonplace Books 143
Getting a Boy forward 181
At Large in the Library 181
Early Reading 183
JONSON, BEN (1573 ?-1637).
To Sir Henry Goodyer 10
To my Book 76
Book-makers and Plagiarists 91
To George Chapman 101
What Shakespeare hath left us 103
On the Portrait of Shakespeare 105
The first Authors for Youth 180
To my Bookseller 261
KEATS, JOHN (1795-1821).
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer 100
KING, WILLIAM (1663-1712).
A Moth 252
A Modern Library 311
KINGSLEY, CHARLES (1819-75).
Useful and Mighty Things 25
Liberty and Bad Books 83
LAMB, CHARLES (1775-1834).
Grace before Books 1
A Catholic Taste in Books 17
A Whimsical Surprise 84
Books with One Idea in Them 121
When and Where to Read 130
Proof of good Matter 170
Out-of-doors Reading 171
Discrimination in Bindings 244
The Treasure 254
The Readers at the Bookstall 255
To the Editor of _The Everyday Book_ 269
The Poor Student 274
Borrowers of Books 276
The Bodleians of Oxford 364
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE (1775-1864).
To Wordsworth 21
'Well I remember how you smiled' 57
The Dead alone Canonized 66
The Classics 67
To Leigh Hunt 95
Small Authors Dangerous 131
Old-Fashioned Verse 186
Sent with Poems 202
Safe and untouched 312
LAW, WILLIAM (1686-1761).
Classicus 66
Poetry and Piety 209
LEIGHTON, ROBERT (1822-69).
The Libraries of Heaven 49
LEWIS, MATTHEW GREGORY (1775-1818).
In Paternoster Row 263
LOCKE, JOHN (1632-1704).
Chewing the Cud 126
A new Method of a Commonplace Book 141
LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON (1794-1854).
The Bible and Burns 298
LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-82).
My Books 10
'The sweet serenity' 20
Bayard Taylor 234
The Wind over the Chimney 286
LOWE, ROBERT, LORD SHERBROOKE (1811-92).
Remunerative Reading 39
LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL (1819-91).
Security in Old Books 75
Literature for Desolate Islands 303
LYLY, JOHN (1554 ?-1606).
Fashion in Books 43
'Far more seemly were it' 304
LYTTON, EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON, BARON (1803-73).
The Souls of Books 22
The Classics always Modern 68
The Bee and the Butterfly 143
The Pharmacy of Books 165
The Library an Heraclea 329
M., J. (fl. 1627).
On the Library at Cambridge 368
MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD (1800-59).
Action and Reaction 53
The Value of Modern Books 73
Original Editions 96
The Critics' Influence on the Public 117
Classical Education for Women 207
'I would rather be a poor man' 232
MACCREERY, JOHN (1768-1832).
Bookbindings 243
MAGINN, WILLIAM (1793-1842).
The Booksellers' Banquet 271
MALLET, DAVID (1705 ?-65).
The Reading Coxcomb 152
MAURICE, FREDERICK DENISON (1805-72).
The Ultimate Test of Books 53
The Message of Books 161
MILTON, JOHN (1608-74).
Books are not dead things 47
'To the pure all things are pure' 83
Plagiarie 90
Shakespeare's livelong Monument 105
'Deep-versed in Books and shallow in himself' 157
Tetrachordon 256
An Ode to Mr. John Rouse (translated by Cowper) 357
MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL (1787-1855).
That invention of the enemy--an Abridgement 96
MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY (1689-1762).
A cheap and lasting Pleasure 204
MONTAIGNE, MICHAEL EYQUEM DE (1533-92).
John Florio's Translation--
The Commodity Reaped of Books 32
Coats for Mackerel 44
Transplantation 90
Inductive Criticism 122
'There's more ado to interpret interpretation' 122
Bescribbling with Notes 139
Skipping Wit 144
Books an Enemy to Health 163
Early Reading 182
Letter-Ferrets 218
The Author's Library 319
MOORE, THOMAS (1779-1852).
'My only Books' 196
A Counter Attraction 199
MORE, HANNAH (1745-1833).
A Daughter's Favourite Novels 86
Literary Cookery 92
MORE, SIR THOMAS (1478-1535).
Of a New-married Student 198
NORRIS, JOHN (1657-1711).
'Reading without thinking' 142
NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH (LADY STIRLING-MAXWELL) (1808-77).
To my Books 8
NORTON, JOHN BRUCE (1815-83).
Merton Library 365
OLDHAM, JOHN (1653-83).
To Cosmelia 199
ORFORD, EARL OF. _See_ WALPOLE.
OVERBURY, SIR THOMAS (1581-1613).
Man's Prerogative 13
PARNELL, THOMAS (1679-1718).
The Bookworm 250
PARROT, HENRY (fl. 1600-26).
Ad Bibliopolam 262
PATTISON, MARK (1813-84).
The Manufactory of Books 92
PAYN, JAMES (1830-98).
The Blessed Chloroform of the Mind 168
PEACHAM, HENRY (1576 ?-1643 ?).
A Bookish Ambition 149
Care as to Bindings 241
PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE (1785-1866).
The Outside of a Book 247
PERCY, THOMAS, BISHOP OF DROMORE (1729-1811).
Why Books were Invented 37
PETRARCH (PETRARCA) FRANCESCO (1304-74).
The Delightful Society of Books 1
POPE, ALEXANDER (1688-1744).
Style v. Sense 114
Where Fools Rush In 115
Homer and Virgil 127
Lintott's New Miscellany 267
Cibber's Library 313
PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH (1802-39).
To Helen: written in Keble's _Christian Year_ 201
PRIDEAUX, PETER (1578-1650).
On the Death of Sir Thomas Bodley 356
PROCTER, ADELAIDE ANNE (1825-64).
A Student 238
PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER (BARRY CORNWALL) (1787-1874).
My Books 8
QUARLES, FRANCIS (1572-1644).
On Buying the Bible 291
RABELAIS, FRANÇOIS (1483-1553).
By Divine Inspiration 41
Writing at Meal Times 171
RICHARDSON, SAMUEL (1689-1761).
Advice to Mothers 181
ROBERTSON, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1816-53).
Books instead of Stimulants 165
ROCHESTER, EARL OF. _See_ WILMOT.
ROSCOE, WILLIAM CALDWELL (1823-59).
To my Books on Parting with Them 9
ROSCOMMON, EARL OF. _See_ DILLON.
RUSKIN, JOHN (1819-1900).
Books of the Hour and of all Time 54
Taste in Literature and Art 117
Reading and Illiteracy 159
Girls' Reading 208
The Most Valuable Book 254
National Expenditure on Books 274
Libraries for Every City 326
ST. ALBANS, VISCOUNT. _See_ BACON.
SAXE, JOHN GODFREY (1816-87).
The Library 354
SCOTT, SIR WALTER (1771-1832).
Appetite and Satiety 147
The Ghost of Betty Barnes 203
The Antiquary's Treasures 231
The Bannatyne Club 270
Dominie Sampson in the Library 315
SELDEN, JOHN (1584-1654).
'It is good to have translations' 100
Quotation 102
Censorship 119
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564-1616).
'Who will believe my verse' 55
'Study is like the heaven's glorious sun' 159
'How well he's read' 162
Books and Eyesight 164
Reading for Love's Sake 189
The Book of the Brain 191
Books as Spokesmen 194
Women's eyes 196
'Marriage! my years are young' 198
'The state, whereon I studied' 215
Dainties that are Bred of a Book 219
'Is not the leaf turned down' 240
Gold Clasps and a Golden Story 242
Nobler than Contents 242
'Hark you, sir; I'll have them very fairly bound' 243
'In Nature's infinite Book' 283
The Secret of Strength 288
Red Letters and Conjuring 289
'Come, and take choice' 306
'Of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my Books' 310
'Me, poor man,--my library' 316
SHEFFIELD, JOHN, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (1648-1721).
The Sufficiency of Homer 127
SHERBROOKE, VISCOUNT. _See_ LOWE.
SHERIDAN, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH. _See_ NORTON.
SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY (1751-1816).
'Steal! to be sure they will' 91
Lydia Languish and the Circulating Library 213
A neat Rivulet of Text 249
SHERIDAN, THOMAS (1687-1738).
Our Best Acquaintance 11
SHIRLEY, JAMES (1596-1666).
Sweet and Happy Hours 26
A Book of Flesh and Blood 196
SKELTON, JOHN (1460 ?-1529).
An Edition de luxe 241
SMITH, ALEXANDER (1830-67).
The True Elysian Fields 11
Power and Gladness 32
SMITH, SYDNEY (1771-1845).
A Short Cut to Fame 154
'No furniture so charming as Books' 264
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634-1716).
'He who has published an injurious Book' 80
A little Book the most excellent 120
'Much reading is like much eating' 158
SOUTHEY, ROBERT (1774-1843).
My days among the Dead are passed 4
A Heavenly Delight 5
The Best of all Possible Company 5
More than Meat, Drink, and Clothing 28
A Library of Twelve 62
Reading several Books at a time 130
Homo Unius Libri 292
A Colloquy in a Library 320
SPENSER, EDMUND (1552 ?-99).
One day I wrote her name 56
To his Book: of his Lady 195
STANHOPE, PHILIP DORMER, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD (1694-1773).
A Consolation for the Deaf 4
Books and the World 180
The last Editions the best 235
'Tis folly to be wise 246
Genteel Ornaments 273
STEELE, SIR RICHARD (1672-1729).
Exercise for the Mind 37
STEPHEN, SIR JAMES (1789-1859).
Poets as Commentators 136
STERNE, LAURENCE (1713-1768).
The Company of Mutes 3
Mr. Shandy's Library 314
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (1850-1894).
Picture-Books in Winter 174
STIRLING-MAXWELL, LADY. _See_ NORTON.
SWIFT, JONATHAN (1667-1745).
The Battle of the Books 63
Recipe for an Anthology 94
Cupid and the Book of Poems 194
A Standard for Language 296
'I have sometimes heard' 303
SYLVESTER, JOSUAH (1563-1618).
Surcloying the Stomach 156
SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON (1840-93).
[Greek: hupothêkê eis emauton]('Back to thy books!') 197
TAYLOR, JOHN (1580-1653).
Books and Thieves 77
To the Good or Bad Reader 150
Fast and Loose 289
On _Coryat's Crudities_ 302
TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM (1628-99).
The Multiplication of Originals 59
Ancient and Modern Books 63
Books as Signposts 110
TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD (1809-92).
Poets and their Bibliographies 98
Merlin's Book 289
THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE (1811-63).
Novels are Sweets 89
'There are no race of people who talk about Books' 153
A Kindly Tie 187
THOMSON, JAMES (1700-48).
The Mighty Dead 161
THOMSON, RICHARD (1794-1865).
The Book of Life 284
TICKLE, THOMAS (1686-1740).
The Hornbook 175
TOOKE, JOHN HORNE (1736-1812).
Read Few Books well 129
TRAPP, JOSEPH (1679-1747).
Oxford and Cambridge: an Epigram 113
TRENCH, RICHARD CHEVENIX, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN (1807-86).
Books and Life 160
TUPPER, MARTIN FARQUHAR (1810-89).
Books and Friends 12
TURNER, CHARLES TENNYSON (1808-79).
On Certain Books 82
VAUGHAN, HENRY (1622-95).
To his Books 13
The Book 284
To the Holy Bible 290
On Sir Thomas Bodley's Library 362
VERE, SIR AUBREY DE (1788-1846).
Sacred and Profane Writers 296
VERULAM, LORD. _See_ BACON.
VOLTAIRE, FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET DE (1694-1778).
Multiplication is Vexation 59
The Seat of Authority 107
WALLER, SIR WILLIAM (1597 ?-1668).
The Contentment I have in my Books 2
Riding Post 146
Full Libraries and Empty Heads 149
WALPOLE, HORATIO, EARL OF ORFORD (1717-97).
Lounging Books 169
Literary Upholsterers 264
WARD, JOHN WILLIAM, EARL OF DUDLEY (1781-1833).
A Preference for Great Models 72
WATTS, ISAAC (1674-1748).
Books to be Marked 139
WESLEY, JOHN (1703-91).
'I read only the Bible' 291
A Man of one Book 292
WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE (1605-75).
The Soul's Viaticum 368
WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (1807-92).
A Magnate in the Realm of Books 7
The Library 326
WILMOT, JOHN, EARL OF ROCHESTER (1647-80).
'Books bear him up awhile' 39
WILSON, JOHN (d. 1889).
O for a Booke 171
WITHER, GEORGE (1588-1667).
Mountebank Authors 78
'Good God! how many dungboats' 94
In bondage to the Bookseller 262
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM (1770-1850).
Books a substantial World 21
The Tables Turned 172
Early Reading 184
YOUNG, EDWARD (1683-1765).
How Volumes Swell 93
An ignorant Book-collector 219
NOTES 369
INDEX OF AUTHORS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT AND IN THE NOTES 400
THE BOOK-LOVERS' ANTHOLOGY
GRACE BEFORE BOOKS
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the
course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon
a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a
solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts--a
grace before Milton--a grace before Shakespeare--a devotional exercise
proper to be said before reading the _Fairy Queen_?--but, the received
ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of
manducation, I shall confine my observations to the experience which I
have had of the grace, properly so called; commending my new scheme for
extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance
in part heretical liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for
the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian
Christians, no matter where assembled.--C. LAMB. _Grace before Meat._
THE DELIGHTFUL SOCIETY OF BOOKS
These friends of mine regard the pleasures of the world as the supreme
good; they do not comprehend that it is possible to renounce these
pleasures. They are ignorant of my resources. I have friends whose
society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of
all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live
with, always at my command. They come at my call, and return when I
desire them: they are never out of humour, and they answer all my
questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of
past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature: these teach me
how to live, and those how to die: these dispel my melancholy by their
mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit: and some there are who
prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become
thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open a door to all
the arts and sciences. As a reward for such great services, they require
only a corner of my little house, where they may be safely sheltered
from the depredations of their enemies. In fine, I carry them with me
into the fields, the silence of which suits them better than the
business and tumults of cities.--PETRARCH. _Life_ by S. Dodson.
THE CONTENTMENT I HAVE IN MY BOOKS
Here is the best solitary company in the world: and in this particular
chiefly excelling any other, that in my study I am sure to converse with
none but wise men; but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the
society of fools. What an advantage have I by this good fellowship that,
besides the help which I receive from hence, in reference to my life
after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I
lived!--that I can be acquainted with the passages of three or four
thousand years ago, as if they were the weekly occurrences! Here,
without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of
those times; the learnedest philosophers, the wisest counsellors, the
greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with
the best jewels they have in their treasury, with the same freedom that
the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, without suspicion of
felony, make use of them as mine own. I can here, without trespassing,
go into their vineyards, and not only eat my fill of their grapes for my
pleasure, but put up as much as I will in my vessel, and store it up for
my profit and advantage.
How doth this prospect at once set off the goodness of God to me, and
discover mine own weakness? His goodness in providing these helps for
the improvement of mine understanding; and my weakness in needing them.
What a pitiful, simple creature am I, that cannot live to any purpose,
without the help of so many other men's brains! Lord, let this be the
first lesson that I learn from these silent counsellors, to know my own
ignorance: other knowledge puffeth up, this edifieth.--SIR W. WALLER.
_Divine Meditations._
HE THAT LOVETH A BOOK WILL NEVER WANT
The calling of a scholar ... fitteth a man for all conditions and
fortunes; so that he can enjoy prosperity with moderation, and sustain
adversity with comfort: he that loveth a book will never want a faithful
friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual
comforter.... The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the
wisest men of all ages and all countries, who thereby communicate to us
their most deliberate thoughts, choicest notions, and best inventions,
couched in good expression, and digested in exact method? The perusal of
history, how pleasant illumination of mind, how useful direction of
life, how spritely incentives to virtue doth it afford! How doth it
supply the room of experience, and furnish us with prudence at the
expense of others, informing us about the ways of action, and the
consequences thereof by examples, without our own danger or trouble!--I.
BARROW. _Of Industry in our Particular Calling as Scholars._
THE COMPANY OF MUTES
I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient
and modern dead,--who yet live and speak excellently in their works.--My
neighbours think me _often alone_,--and yet at such times I am in
company with more than five hundred mutes--each of whom, at my pleasure,
communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs--quite as intelligibly as any
person living can do by uttering of words.--They always keep the
distance from me which I direct,--and, with a motion of my hand, I can
bring them as near to me as I please.--I lay hands on fifty of them
sometimes in an evening, and handle them as I like;--they never complain
of ill-usage,--and, when dismissed from my presence--though ever so
abruptly--take no offence. Such convenience is not to be enjoyed--nor
such liberty to be taken--with the living.--L. STERNE. _Letters._
A CONSOLATION FOR THE DEAF
I read with more pleasure than ever; perhaps, because it is the only
pleasure I have left. For, since I am struck out of living company by my
deafness, I have recourse to the dead, whom alone I can hear; and I have
assigned them their stated hours of audience. Solid _folios_ are the
people of business, with whom I converse in the morning. _Quartos_ are
the easier mixed company, with whom I sit after dinner; and I pass my
evenings in the light, and often frivolous, _chit-chat_ of small
_octavos_ and _duodecimos_.--LORD CHESTERFIELD.
SWEET UNREPROACHING COMPANIONS
I armed her [Olivia] against the censure of the world, showed her that
books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if
they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to
endure it.--O. GOLDSMITH. _The Vicar of Wakefield._
MY DAYS AMONG THE DEAD ARE PASSED
My days among the Dead are passed;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedewed
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.
My thoughts are with the Dead; with them
I live in long-past years,
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,
Partake their hopes and fears,
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind.
My hopes are with the Dead; anon
My place with them will be.
And I with them shall travel on
Through all Futurity;
Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.
R. SOUTHEY.
A HEAVENLY DELIGHT
Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery! What is
that to the opening a box of books! The joy upon lifting up the cover
must be something like what we shall feel when Peter the Porter opens
the door upstairs, and says, Please to walk in, sir. That I shall never
be paid for my labour according to the current value of time and labour,
is tolerably certain; but if any one should offer me £10,000 to forgo
that labour, I should bid him and his money go to the devil, for twice
the sum could not purchase me half the enjoyment. It will be a great
delight to me in the next world, to take a fly and visit these old
worthies, who are my only society here, and to tell them what excellent
company I found them here at the lakes of Cumberland, two centuries
after they had been dead and turned to dust. In plain truth, I exist
more among the dead than the living, and think more about them, and,
perhaps, feel more about them.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to S. T. Coleridge).
THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE COMPANY
Coleridge is gone to Devonshire, and I was going to say I am alone, but
that the sight of Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Milton, and the Bible,
on my table, and Castanheda, and Barros, and Osorio at my elbow, tell me
I am in the best of all possible company.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to G. C.
Bedford).
Worthy books
Are not companions--they are solitudes;
We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.
P. J. BAILEY. _Festus._
THE FELLOWSHIP OF BOOKS
What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the world
without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search for
and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still we
take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again, as
we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing this
visit will be the favoured hour and all will be told us....
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books,
though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less
reading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least
wise, however knowing or learned.--A. B. ALCOTT. _Tablets._
A COMPANY OF THE WISEST AND THE WITTIEST
There are books which are of that importance in a man's private
experience, as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius Agrippa, of
Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus of Thrace,--books which take rank
in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so
medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative,--books
which are the work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, so
nearly equal to the world which they paint, that, though one shuts them
with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion from them to accuse his way of
living.
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the
wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries,
in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their
learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible,
solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the
thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written
out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.--R. W.
EMERSON. _Books._
We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their
sterling and intrinsic merit.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._
A MAGNATE IN THE REALM OF BOOKS
One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore
A ready credence in his looks,
A lettered magnate, lording o'er
An ever-widening realm of books.
In him brain-currents, near and far,
Converged as in a Leyden jar;
The old, dead authors thronged him round about,
And Elzevir's grey ghosts from leathern graves looked out.
He knew each living pundit well,
Could weigh the gifts of him or her,
And well the market value tell
Of poet and philosopher.
But if he lost, the scenes behind,
Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,
Finding the actors human at the best,
No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.
His boyhood fancies not outgrown,
He loved himself the singer's art;
Tenderly, gently, by his own
He knew and judged an author's heart.
No Rhadamanthine brow of doom
Bowed the dazed pedant from his room;
And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,
Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.
Pleasant it was to roam about
The lettered world as he had done,
And see the lords of song without
Their singing robes and garlands on.
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,
Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,
And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.
J. G. WHITTIER. _The Tent on the Beach._
CHOOSE an author as you choose a friend.--W. DILLON,
EARL OF ROSCOMMON. _Essay on Translated Verse._
MY BOOKS
All round the room my silent servants wait,--
My friends in every season, bright and dim;
Angels and seraphim
Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low,
And spirits of the skies all come and go
Early and late;
From the old world's divine and distant date,
From the sublimer few,
Down to the poet who but yester-eve
Sang sweet and made us grieve,
All come, assembling here in order due.
And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,
With Erato and all her vernal sighs,
Great Clio with her victories elate,
Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes.
Oh friends, whom chance and change can never harm,
Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die,
Within whose folding soft eternal charm
I love to lie,
And meditate upon your verse that flows,
And fertilizes whereso'er it goes....
B. W. PROCTER. _An Autobiographical Fragment._
TO MY BOOKS
Silent companions of the lonely hour,
Friends who can never alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,--
Let me return to _you_, this turmoil ending,
Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,
And, o'er your old familiar pages bending,
Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought;
Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,
Fancies, the audible echo of my own,
'Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime
My native language spoke in friendly tone,
And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell
On these, my unripe musings, told so well.
THE HON. CAROLINE NORTON.
ON PARTING WITH MY BOOKS
Ye dear companions of my silent hours,
Whose pages oft before my eyes would strew
So many sweet and variegated flowers--
Dear Books, awhile, perhaps for ay, adieu!
The dark cloud of misfortune o'er me lours:
No more by winter's fire--in summer's bowers,
My toil-worn mind shall be refreshed by you:
We part! sad thought! and while the damp devours
Your leaves, and the worm slowly eats them through,
Dull Poverty and its attendant ills,
Wasting of health, vain toil, corroding care,
And the world's cold neglect, which surest kills,
Must be my bitter doom; yet I shall bear
Unmurmuring, for my good perchance these evils are.
J. H. LEIGH HUNT.
TO MY BOOKS ON PARTING WITH THEM
As one who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, yet hopes again erewhile,
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers as he may affliction's dart,--
Thus, loved associates! chiefs of elder Art!
Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you; nor with fainting heart;
For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore;
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more.--W. ROSCOE.
TRUE FRIENDS THAT CHEER
It is a beautiful incident in the story of Mr. Roscoe's misfortunes, and
one which cannot fail to interest the studious mind, that the parting
with his books seems to have touched upon his tenderest feelings, and to
have been the only circumstance that could provoke the notice of his
Muse. The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent,
companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of
adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only
retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of
intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only
continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with
that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow.--W.
IRVING. _The Sketch Book._
MY BOOKS
Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways,
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.
H. W. LONGFELLOW.
TO SIR HENRY GOODYER
When I would know thee, Goodyer, my thought looks
Upon thy well-made choice of friends, and books;
Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends
In making thy friends books, and thy books friends:
Now must I give thy life and deed the voice
Attending such a study, such a choice;
Where, though it be love that to thy praise doth move,
It was a knowledge that begat that love.
BEN JONSON.
OUR BEST ACQUAINTANCE
While you converse with lords and dukes,
I have their betters here--my books;
Fixed in an elbow chair at ease
I choose my companions as I please.
I'd rather have one single shelf
Than all my friends, except yourself;
For after all that can be said
Our best acquaintance are the dead.
T. SHERIDAN.
THE TRUE ELYSIAN FIELDS
In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights. My
interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower
I am in the present; with the book I am in the past. I go into my
library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe morning air of the
world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it
vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the
laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the
armies of Alexander; I feel the ground shake beneath the march of
Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre,--the stage is time, the play is the
play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what
processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of
captives are dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquerors! I hiss or cry
'Bravo' when the great actors come on shaking the stage. I am a Roman
Emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with
Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains,
the out-comings and in-goings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael,
Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile,
Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral
procession--all these things I find within the boards of my Old
Testament. What a silence in those old books as of a half-peopled
world--what bleating of flocks--what green pastoral rest--what
indubitable human existence! Across brawling centuries of blood and war,
I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of
Rebekah's camels. O men and women, so far separated, yet so near, so
strange, yet so well-known, by what miraculous power do I know ye all!
Books are the true Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead
converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What
king's court can boast such company? What school of philosophy such
wisdom? The wit of the ancient world is glancing and flashing there.
There is Pan's pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Seated in my library
at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally
visited by a strange sense of the supernatural. They are not collections
of printed pages, they are ghosts. I take one down and it speaks with me
in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it
alone possesses knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I
think I misapply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel
with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour or Genghis Khan on
their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead,
not the living, that attend my levees.--A. SMITH. _Dreamthorp._
BOOKS AND FRIENDS
One drachma for a good book, and a thousand talents for a true
friend;--
So standeth the market, where scarce is ever costly:
Yea, were the diamonds of Golconda common as shingles on the shore,
A ripe apple would ransom kings before a shining stone:
And so, were a wholesome book as rare as an honest friend,
To choose the book be mine: the friend let another take.
M. F. TUPPER. _Proverbial Philosophy._
A blessed companion is a book,--a book that, fitly chosen, is a
life-long friend.--D. JERROLD. _Books._
May I a small house and large garden have!
And a few friends, and many books, both true.
A. COWLEY. _The Wish._
THE DESIRABLE TABERNACLE
O celestial gift of divine liberality, descending from the Father of
light to raise up the rational soul even to heaven!... Undoubtedly,
indeed, thou hast placed thy desirable tabernacle in books, where the
Most High, the Light of light, the Book of Life, hath established thee.
Here then all who ask receive, all who seek find thee, to those who
knock thou openest quickly. In books cherubim expand their wings, that
the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to pole,
from the rising to the setting sun, from the north and from the sea. In
them the most high incomprehensible God Himself is contained and
worshipped....
Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books, how
easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human
ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who
instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger,
without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if
investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake
them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at
you.--R. DE BURY. _Philobiblon._
MAN'S PREROGATIVE
Books are a part of man's prerogative,
In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old.
Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward do extend.
SIR T. OVERBURY. _The Wife._
TO HIS BOOKS
Bright books: the perspectives to our weak sights,
The clear projections of discerning lights,
Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day,
The track of fled souls and their Milky Way,
The dead alive and busy, the still voice
Of enlarged spirits, kind Heaven's white decoys!
Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flowers,
Which in commerce with light spend all their hours;
Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun,
But with glad haste unveil to kiss the Sun.
Beneath you, all is dark, and a dead night,
Which whoso lives in, wants both health and sight.
By sucking you the wise, like bees, do grow
Healing and rich, though this they do most slow,
Because most choicely; for as great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more;
And the great task to try, then know, the good,
To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance: for man dies
Oft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flies.
But you were all choice flowers; all set and dressed
By old sage florists, who well knew the best;
And I amidst you all am turned a weed!
Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed.
Then thank thyself, wild fool, that wouldst not be
Content to know--what was too much for thee.
H. VAUGHAN.
THE LEGACIES OF GENIUS
Quod nec Iovis ira, nec ignis,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.--OVID.
Aristotle tells us, that the world is a copy or transcript of those
ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas
which are in the mind of man are a transcript of the world. To this we
may add, that words are the transcript of those ideas which are in the
mind of man, and that writing or printing is the transcript of words. As
the Supreme Being has expressed, and as it were printed, his ideas in
the creation, men express their ideas in books, which, by this great
invention of these latter ages, may last as long as the sun and moon,
and perish only in the general wreck of nature. Thus Cowley, in his poem
on the Resurrection, mentioning the destruction of the universe, has
these admirable lines:
Now all the wide extended sky,
And all the harmonious worlds on high
And Virgil's sacred work shall die.
There is no other method of fixing those thoughts which arise and
disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting them to the last periods
of time; no other method of giving a permanency to our ideas, and
preserving the knowledge of any particular person, when his body is
mixed with the common mass of matter, and his soul retired into the
world of spirits. Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to
mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as
presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.--J. ADDISON.
_Spectator_, 166.
IN PRISON
O happy be the day which gave that mind
Learning's first tincture--blest thy fostering care,
Thou most beloved of parents, worthiest sire!
Which, taste-inspiring, made the lettered page
My favourite companion: most esteemed,
And most improving! Almost from the day
Of earliest childhood to the present hour
Of gloomy, black misfortune, books, dear books,
Have been, and are, my comforts. Morn and night,
Adversity, prosperity, at home,
Abroad, health, sickness,--good or ill report,
The same firm friends; the same refreshment rich
And source of consolation. Nay, e'en here
Their magic power they lose not; still the same,
Of matchless influence in this prison-house,
Unutterably horrid; in an hour
Of woe, beyond all fancy's fictions drear.
W. DODD. _Thoughts in Prison._
THE DEPOSITARY OF EVERYTHING HONOURABLE
Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of
demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves
reading has everything within his reach. He has but to desire; and he
may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to
perform....
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force
us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They present direct
ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a
well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the
happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible
that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining
some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson; when I
read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual
chameleon, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He
that revels in a well-chosen library has innumerable dishes, and all of
admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to
distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile,
susceptible to every impression, and gaining new refinement from them
all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers,
whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous.--W. GODWIN. _The
Inquirer: Of an Early Taste for Reading._
LOVE THAT IS LARGE
There is a period of modern times, at which the love of books appears to
have been of a more decided nature than at either of these--I mean the
age just before and after the Reformation, or rather all that period
when book-writing was confined to the learned languages. Erasmus is the
god of it. Bacon, a mighty book-man, saw, among his other sights, the
great advantage of loosening the vernacular tongue, and wrote both Latin
and English. I allow this is the greatest closeted age of books; of old
scholars sitting in dusty studies; of heaps of 'illustrious obscure',
rendering themselves more illustrious and more obscure by retreating
from the 'thorny queaches' of Dutch and German names into the 'vacant
interlunar caves' of appellations latinized or translated. I think I see
all their volumes now, filling the shelves of a dozen German convents.
The authors are bearded men, sitting in old wood-cuts, in caps and
gowns, and their books are dedicated to princes and statesmen, as
illustrious as themselves. My old friend Wierus, who wrote a thick book,
_De Praestigiis Daemonum_, was one of them, and had a fancy worthy of
his sedentary stomach. I will confess, once for all, that I have a
liking for them all. It is my link with the bibliomaniacs, whom I admit
into our relationship, because my love is large and my family pride
nothing. But still I take my idea of books read with a gusto, of
companions for bed and board, from the two ages beforementioned. The
other is of too book-worm a description. There must be both a judgement
and a fervour; a discrimination and a boyish eagerness; and (with all
due humility) something of a point of contact between authors worth
reading and the reader. How can I take Juvenal into the fields, or
Valcarenghius _De Aortae Aneurismate_ to bed with me? How could I expect
to walk before the face of nature with the one; to tire my elbow
properly with the other, before I put out my candle and turn round
deliciously on the right side? Or how could I stick up _Coke upon
Littleton_ against something on the dinner-table, and be divided between
a fresh paragraph and a mouthful of salad?--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My
Books._
A CATHOLIC TASTE IN BOOKS
To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced
product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and
breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own.
_Lord Foppington in 'The Relapse'._
An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright
sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the
great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some
credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable
portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in
others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I
am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for
me.
I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor
Jonathan Wild too low. I can read any thing which I call a _book_. There
are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.
In this catalogue of _books which are no books_--_biblia a-biblia_--I
reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound
and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at
Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and,
generally, all those volumes which 'no gentleman's library should be
without'; the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and
Paley's _Moral Philosophy_. With these exceptions, I can read almost any
thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.
I confess that it moves my spleen to see these _things in books'
clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true
shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate
occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it
is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what 'seem its leaves', to
come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a
Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of
blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an
array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would
comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus
himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the
world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them, to warm my
ragged veterans in their spoils.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books
and Reading._
A SENSE OF HUMOUR
I am not prepared to back Charles Lamb's Index Expurgatorius. It is
difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something
either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be
applied. I know books that are curious, and really amusing, from their
excessive badness. If you want to find precisely how a thing ought not
to be said, you take one of them down and make it perform the service of
the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some volumes in which, at a
chance opening, you are certain to find a mere platitude delivered in
the most superb and amazing climax of big words, and others in which
you have a like happy facility in finding every proposition stated with
its stern forward, as sailors say, or in some other grotesque
mismanagement of composition. There are no better farces on or off the
stage than when two or three congenial spirits ransack books of this
kind, and compete with each other in taking fun out of them.--J. H.
BURTON. _The Book-Hunter._
BOOKS THE TRUE LEVELLERS
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior
minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of
all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious
thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books! They
are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the
spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to
all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence,
of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter
though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling.
If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,
if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and
Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I
shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become
a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society
in the place where I live.
To make this means of culture effectual a man must select good books,
such as have been written by right-minded and strong-minded men, real
thinkers, who instead of diluting by repetition what others say, have
something to say for themselves, and write to give relief to full,
earnest souls; and these works must not be skimmed over for amusement,
but read with fixed attention and a reverential love of truth. In
selecting books we may be aided much by those who have studied more than
ourselves. But, after all, it is best to be determined in this
particular a good deal by our own tastes.--W. E. CHANNING.
_Self-Culture._
AUTHORS AS LOVERS OF BOOKS
I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books....
We conceive of Plato as a lover of books; of Aristotle certainly; of
Plutarch, Pliny, Horace, Julian, and Marcus Aurelius. Virgil, too, must
have been one; and, after a fashion, Martial. May I confess that the
passage which I recollect with the greatest pleasure in Cicero, is where
he says that books delight us at home, _and are no impediment abroad_;
travel with us, ruralize with us. His period is rounded off to some
purpose: '_Delectant domi, non impediunt foris; peregrinantur,
rusticantur._' I am so much of this opinion, that I do not care to be
anywhere without having a book or books at hand, and like Dr. Orkborne,
in the novel of _Camilla_, stuff the coach or post-chaise with them
whenever I travel. As books, however, become ancient, the love of them
becomes more unequivocal and conspicuous. The ancients had little of
what we call learning. They made it. They were also no very eminent
buyers of books--they made books for posterity. It is true, that it is
not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much. The
scholar, in Chaucer, who would rather have
At his beddes head
A twenty bokes, clothed, in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,
Than robès rich, or fiddle, or psaltry--
doubtless beat all our modern collectors in his passion for reading....
Dante puts Homer, the great ancient, in his Elysium, upon trust; but a
few years afterwards, _Homer_, the book, made its appearance in Italy,
and Petrarch, in a transport, put it upon his bookshelves, where he
adored it, like 'the unknown God'. Petrarch ought to be the god of the
Bibliomaniacs, for he was a collector and a man of genius, which is an
union that does not often happen. He copied out, with his own precious
hand, the manuscripts he rescued from time, and then produced others for
time to reverence. With his head upon a book he died.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT.
_My Books._
The sweet serenity of books.--H. W. LONGFELLOW.
THE THEORY OF BOOKS
Books are the best type of the influence of the past.... The theory of
books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world
around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind,
and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him,
truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him,
immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry.
It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go.
It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion
to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long
does it sing.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._
BOOKS A SUBSTANTIAL WORLD
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
There find I personal themes, a plenteous store,
Matter wherein right voluble I am,
To which I listen with a ready ear;
Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear,--
The gentle Lady married to the Moor;
And heavenly Una with her milk-white Lamb....
Blessings be with them--and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares--
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!
Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.
W. WORDSWORTH. _Personal Talk._
TO WORDSWORTH
We both have run o'er half the space
Listed for mortal's earthly race;
We both have crossed life's fervid line,
And other stars before us shine:
May they be bright and prosperous
As those that have been stars for us!
Our course by Milton's light was sped,
And Shakespeare shining overhead:
Chatting on deck was Dryden too,
The Bacon of the rhyming crew;
None ever crossed our mystic sea
More richly stored with thought than he;
Though never tender nor sublime,
He wrestles with and conquers Time.
To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee,
I left much prouder company;
Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,
But me he mostly sent to bed.
W. S. LANDOR. _Miscellaneous Poems._
THE SOULS OF BOOKS
I
Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room--
High-roofed, with casements, through whose purple pane
Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger.
There THEY reign
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought!--not crowned until the grave
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,
The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!
Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,
All that divide us from the clod ye gave!--
Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense
Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!--
What were our wanderings if without your goals?
As air and light, the glory ye dispense
Becomes our being--who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought--
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakespeare sung!
II
Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard
The various murmur of the labouring crowd,
How still, within those archive-cells interred,
The Calm Ones reign!--and yet they rouse the loud
Passions and tumults of the circling world!
From them, how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardour of the eager Bar;
From them, how many a young Ambition sought
Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar--
By them each restless wing has been unfurled,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!
They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon Poet wistful for the star;
Gave Age its pastime--fired the cheek of Youth--
The unseen sires of all our beings are,--
III
And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart;
I hear it beating through each purple line.
This is thyself, Anacreon--yet, thou art
Wreathed, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine.
I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold,
Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!--
Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old,
'It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;'
These _are_ yourselves--your life of life! The Wise
(Minstrel or Sage) _out_ of their books are clay;
But _in_ their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels--that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!
Hark! the World so loud,
And they, the Movers of the World, so still.
What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud
Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease
Envy and Hate! 'Nine cities claim him dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread!'
And what the charm that can such health distil
From withered leaves--oft poisons in their bloom?
We call some books immoral! _Do they live?_
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace--
God wills that nothing evil shall endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!
Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give
Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb!
Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint?
No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er,
And linger only on the hues that paint
The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore.
None learn from thee to cavil with their God;
None commune with thy genius to depart
Without a loftier instinct of the heart.
Thou mak'st no Atheist--thou but mak'st the mind
Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute--
FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the sod
Lift us! The life which soars above the brute
Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute!
Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;--born
Of him,--the Master-Mocker of mankind,
Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen
Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,--
Do we not place it in our children's hands,
Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?--
God's and man's libel in that foul Yahoo!--
Well, and what mischief can the libel do?
O impotence of Genius to belie
Its glorious task--its mission from the sky!
Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn
On aught the Man should love or Priest should mourn--
And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled,
A harmless wonder to some happy child!
IV
All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we
Who _but_ for them, upon that inch of ground
We call 'THE PRESENT', from the cell could see.
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar,
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round!
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
Traverse all space, and number every star.
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterred Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks you well; lost cities give
Up their untarnished wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn:--at our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill;
Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;--along
Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song;
With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile,
And learn how worlds are bartered for a smile:--
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er,
Ope but that page--lo, Babylon once more!
V
Ye make the Past our heritage and home:
And is this all? No; by each prophet sage--
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem--by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato--by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!--and, above ye all,
By THIS, the Everlasting Monument
Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day--our lights ye are
To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent
The types of Truths whose life is The TO-COME;
In you soars up the Adam from the fall;
In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given--
Even in our death ye bid us hail our birth;--
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one gravestone left upon the Earth.
E. G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, LORD LYTTON.
USEFUL AND MIGHTY THINGS
Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!--a
message to us from the dead--from human souls whom we never saw, who
lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little
sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort
us, open their hearts to us as brothers.... I say we ought to reverence
books, to look at them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and
true, whether they are about religion or politics, farming, trade, or
medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things, the
teacher of all truth, which He has put into the heart of some man to
speak, that he may tell us what is good for our spirits, for our bodies,
and for our country.--C. KINGSLEY. _Village Sermons: On Books._
AN EXTRAORDINARY DELIGHT TO STUDY
To most kind of men it is an extraordinary delight to study. For what a
world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to
the sweet content and capacity of the reader!... What vast tomes are
extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice,
speculation, in verse or prose, &c.! their names alone are the subject
of whole volumes; we have thousands of authors of all sorts, many great
libraries full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out
for several palates; and he is a very block that is affected with none
of them.--R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._
SWEET AND HAPPY HOURS
BORNWELL. Learning is an addition beyond
Nobility of birth; honour of blood
Without the ornament of knowledge is
A glorious ignorance.
FREDERICK. I never knew more sweet and happy hours
Than I employed upon my books.
J. SHIRLEY. _The Lady of Pleasure._
THE PROUDER PLEASURES OF THE MIND
Books cannot always please, however good;
Minds are not ever craving for their food;
But sleep will soon the weary soul prepare
For cares to-morrow that were this day's care:
For forms, for feasts, that sundry times have past,
And formal feasts that will for ever last.
'But then from study will no comforts rise?'--
Yes! such as studious minds alone can prize;
Comforts, yea!--joys ineffable they find,
Who seek the prouder pleasures of the mind:
The soul, collected in those happy hours,
Then makes her efforts, then enjoys her powers;
And in those seasons feels herself repaid,
For labours past and honours long delay'd.
No! 'tis not worldly gain, although by chance
The sons of learning may to wealth advance;
Nor station high, though in some favouring hour
The sons of learning may arrive at power;
Nor is it glory, though the public voice
Of honest praise will make the heart rejoice:
But 'tis the mind's own feelings give the joy,
Pleasures she gathers in her own employ--
Pleasures that gain or praise cannot bestow,
Yet can dilate and raise them when they flow.
G. CRABBE. _The Borough._
A TASTE TO BE PRAYED FOR
If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every
variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness
to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might
go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading.
I speak of it of course only as a worldly advantage, and not in the
slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the higher office and
surer and stronger panoply of religious principles--but as a taste, an
instrument and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this
taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making
a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse
selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in
every period of history--with the wisest, the wittiest--with the
tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned
humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations--a contemporary of all
ages. The world has been created for him.--SIR J. HERSCHEL. _Address to
the Subscribers to the Windsor Public Library._
MORE THAN MEAT, DRINK, AND CLOTHING
I should like you to see the additional book-room that we have fitted
up, and in which I am now writing.... It would please you to see such a
display of literary wealth, which is at once the pride of my eye, and
the joy of my heart, and the food of my mind; indeed, more than
metaphorically, meat, drink, and clothing for me and mine. I verily
believe that no one in my station was ever so rich before, and I am very
sure that no one in any station had ever a more thorough enjoyment of
riches of any kind, or in any way. It is more delightful for me to live
with books than with men, even with all the relish that I have for such
society as is worth having.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to G. C. Bedford).
THE BOOK THE HIGHEST DELIGHT
In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. He
who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against
calamity. Like Plato's disciple who has perceived a truth, 'he is
preserved from harm until another period.' In every man's memory, with
the hours when life culminated, are usually associated certain books
which met his views. Of a large and powerful class we might ask with
confidence, What is the event they most desire? What gift? What but the
book that shall come, which they have sought through all libraries,
through all languages, that shall be to their mature eyes what many a
tinsel-covered toy pamphlet was to their childhood, and shall speak to
the imagination? Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough
of literature. If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask
him what books he read. We expect a great man to be a good reader; or in
proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power.
And though such are a most difficult and exacting class, they are not
less eager. 'He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding,' said
Burke, 'doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his
own to the stature of that he contemplates.'
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. Our
debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our
protest or private addition so rare and insignificant,--and this
commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,--that, in a large
sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote.--R.
W. EMERSON. _Quotation and Originality._
THE PLEASURE DERIVED FROM BOOKS
It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best
books. They impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote, and
the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great English poets, of
Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy,--with a
pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of
all _time_ from their verses. There is some awe mixed with the joy of
our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three
hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which
I also had wellnigh thought and said.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American
Scholar._
OUR DEBT TO A BOOK
Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed
from a book. We go musing into the vault of day and night; no
constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the
roses brick-coloured dust, the frogs pipe, mice peep, and wagons creak
along the road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or
Augustine, and read a few sentences or pages, and lo! the air swims with
life; the front of heaven is full of fiery shapes; secrets of
magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand; life is made up of
them. Such is our debt to a book.--R. W. EMERSON. _Thoughts on Modern
Literature._
RICH FARE
A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits probably preserved
me from the moral shipwreck, so apt to befall those who are deprived in
early life of the paternal pilotage. At the very least, my books kept me
aloof from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon, with their
degrading orgies. For the closet associate of Pope and Addison--the mind
accustomed to the noble, though silent, discourse of Shakespeare and
Milton--will hardly seek, or put up with, low company and slang. The
reading animal will not be content with the brutish wallowings that
satisfy the unlearned pigs of the world.
Later experience enables me to depose to the comfort and blessing that
literature can prove in seasons of sickness and sorrow--how powerfully
intellectual pursuits can help in keeping the head from crazing, and the
heart from breaking,--nay, not to be too grave, how generous mental food
can even atone for a meagre diet--rich fare on the paper for short
commons on the cloth.
Poisoned by the malaria of the Dutch marshes, my stomach, for many
months, resolutely set itself against fish, flesh, or fowl; my appetite
had no more edge than the German knife placed before me. But, luckily,
the mental palate and digestion were still sensible and vigorous; and
whilst I passed untasted every dish at the Rhenish _table d'hôte_, I
could yet enjoy my _Peregrine Pickle_, and the feast after the manner of
the ancients. There was no yearning towards calf's head _à la tortue_,
or sheep's heart; but I could still relish Head _à la Brunnen_ and the
_Heart of Midlothian_.
Still more recently, it was my misfortune, with a tolerable appetite, to
be condemned to lenten fare, like Sancho Panza, by my physician--to a
diet, in fact, lower than any prescribed by the poor-law commissioners;
all animal food, from a bullock to a rabbit, being strictly interdicted;
as well as all fluids stronger than that which lays dust, washes
pinafores, and waters polyanthus. But 'the feast of reason and the flow
of soul' were still mine. Denied beef, I had _Bul_wer and
_Cow_per,--forbidden mutton, there was _Lamb_,--and in lieu of pork, the
great _Bacon_ or _Hogg_.
Then, as to beverage, it was hard, doubtless, for a Christian to set his
face like a Turk against the juice of the grape. But, eschewing wine, I
had still my _Butler_; and in the absence of liquor, all the _choice
spirits_ from Tom Browne to Tom Moore.
Thus, though confined, physically, to the drink that drowns kittens, I
quaffed mentally, not merely the best of our own home-made, but the
rich, racy, sparkling growths of France and Italy, of Germany and
Spain--the champagne of Molière, and the Monte Pulciano of Boccaccio,
the hock of Schiller, and the sherry of Cervantes. Depressed bodily by
the fluid that damps everything, I got intellectually elevated with
Milton, a little merry with Swift, or rather jolly with Rabelais, whose
Pantagruel, by the way, is quite equal to the best gruel with rum in it.
So far can literature palliate or compensate for gastronomical
privations. But there are other evils, great and small, in this world,
which try the stomach less than the head, the heart, and the
temper--bowls that will not roll right--well-laid schemes that will
'gang aglee'--and ill winds that blow with the pertinacity of the
monsoon. Of these, Providence has allotted me a full share; but still,
paradoxical as it may sound, my _burden_ has been greatly lightened by a
_load of books_. The manner of this will be best understood by a feline
illustration. Everybody has heard of the two Kilkenny cats, who devoured
each other; but it is not so generally known that they left behind them
an orphan kitten, which, true to the breed, began to eat itself up, till
it was diverted from the operation by a mouse. Now, the human mind,
under vexation, is like that kitten, for it is apt to _prey upon
itself_, unless drawn off by a new object; and none better for the
purpose than a book; for example, one of Defoe's; for who, in reading
his thrilling _History of the Great Plague_, would not be reconciled to
a few little ones?
Many, many a dreary, weary hour have I got over--many a gloomy misgiving
postponed--many a mental or bodily annoyance forgotten, by help of the
tragedies and comedies of our dramatists and novelists! Many a trouble
has been soothed by the still small voice of the moral philosopher--many
a dragon-like care charmed to sleep by the sweet song of the poet, for
all which I cry incessantly, not aloud, but in my heart, Thanks and
honour to the glorious masters of the pen, and the great inventors of
the press! Such has been my own experience of the blessing and comfort
of literature and intellectual pursuits; and of the same mind,
doubtless, was Sir Humphry Davy, who went for 'consolations in
_Travel_', not to the inn or the posting house, but to his library and
his books.--T. HOOD (Letter to the Manchester Athenaeum, 1843).
POWER AND GLADNESS
Books written when the soul is at spring-tide,
When it is laden like a groaning sky
Before a thunder-storm, are power and gladness,
And majesty and beauty. They seize the reader
As tempests seize a ship, and bear him on
With a wild joy. Some books are drenchèd sands,
On which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,
Like a wrecked argosy. What power in books!
They mingle gloom and splendour, as I've oft,
In thunderous sunsets, seen the thunder-piles
Seamed with dull fire and fiercest glory-rents.
They awe me to my knees, as if I stood
In presence of a king. They give me tears;
Such glorious tears as Eve's fair daughters shed,
When first they clasped a Son of God, all bright
With burning plumes and splendours of the sky,
In zoning heaven of their milky arms.
How few read books aright! Most souls are shut
By sense from grandeur, as a man who snores
Night-capped and wrapt in blankets to the nose
Is shut out from the night, which, like a sea,
Breaketh for ever on a strand of stars.
A. SMITH. _A Life-Drama._
THE COMMODITY REAPED OF BOOKS
The commerce of books comforts me in age and solaceth me in
solitariness. It easeth me of the burthen of a wearisome sloth: and at
all times rids me of tedious companies: it abateth the edge of fretting
sorrow, on condition it be not extreme and over-insolent. To divert me
from any importunate imagination or insinuating conceit, there is no
better way than to have recourse unto books; with ease they allure me to
them, and with facility they remove them all. And though they perceive I
neither frequent nor seek them, but wanting other more essential,
lively, and more natural commodities, they never mutiny or murmur at me;
but still entertain me with one and self-same visage....
The sick man is not to be moaned that hath his health in his sleeve. In
the experience and use of this sentence, which is most true, consisteth
all the commodity I reap of books. In effect I make no other use of them
than those who know them not. I enjoy them, as a miser doth his gold; to
know that I may enjoy them when I list, my mind is settled and satisfied
with the right of possession. I never travel without books, nor in peace
nor in war: yet do I pass many days and months without using them. It
shall be anon, say I, or to-morrow, or when I please; in the meanwhile
the time runs away, and passeth without hurting me. For it is wonderful
what repose I take, and how I continue in this consideration, that they
are at my elbow to delight me when time shall serve; and in
acknowledging what assistance they give unto my life. This is the best
munition I have found in this human peregrination, and I extremely
bewail those men of understanding that want the same. I accept with
better will all other kinds of amusements, how slight soever, forsomuch
as this cannot fail me.--MONTAIGNE.
BOOKS IS NURSE TO TRUTH
Condemn the days of elders great or small,
And then blur out the course of present time;
Cast one age down, and so do overthrow all,
And burn the books of printed prose or rhyme:
Who shall believe he rules, or she doth reign,
In time to come, if writers loose their pain?
The pen records time past and present both:
Skill brings forth books, and books is nurse to truth.
T. CHURCHYARD. _Worthiness of Wales._
FOR WISDOM, PIETY, DELIGHT, OR USE
In vain that husbandman his seed doth sow,
If he his crop not in due season mow.
A general sets his army in array
In vain, unless he fight, and win the day.
'Tis virtuous action that must praise bring forth,
Without which slow advice is little worth.
Yet they who give good counsel, praise deserve,
Though in the active part they cannot serve:
In action, learnéd counsellors their age,
Profession, or disease, forbids to engage.
Nor to philosophers is praise denied,
Whose wise instructions after-ages guide;
Yet vainly most their age in study spend;
No end of writing books, and to no end:
Beating their brains for strange and hidden things,
Whose knowledge nor delight nor profit brings:
Themselves with doubt both day and night perplex,
No gentle reader please, or teach, but vex.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
What need we gaze upon the spangled sky
Or into matter's hidden causes pry?...
If we were wise these things we should not mind
But more delight in easy matters find....
Learn to live well that thou mayst die so too,
To live and die is all we have to do.
SIR J. DENHAM. _Translation of Mancini._
OF THE ENTERTAINMENT OF BOOKS
The diversions of reading, though they are not always of the strongest
kind, yet they generally leave a better effect than the grosser
satisfactions of sense: for, if they are well chosen, they neither dull
the appetite nor strain the capacity. On the contrary, they refresh the
inclinations, and strengthen the power, and improve under experiment:
and, which is best of all, they entertain and perfect at the same time;
and convey wisdom and knowledge through pleasure. By reading a man does
as it were antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with the
ages past. And this way of running up beyond one's nativity is much
better than Plato's pre-existence; because here a man knows something of
the state and is the wiser for it; which he is not in the other.
In conversing with books we may choose our company, and disengage
without ceremony or exception. Here we are free from the formalities of
custom and respect: we need not undergo the penance of a dull story from
a fop of figure; but may shake off the haughty, the impertinent, and the
vain, at pleasure. Besides, authors, like women, commonly dress when
they make a visit. Respect to themselves makes them polish their
thoughts, and exert the force of their understanding more than they
would or can do in ordinary conversation: so that the reader has as it
were the spirit and essence in a narrow compass; which was drawn off
from a much larger proportion of time, labour, and expense. Like an
heir, he is born rather than made rich; and comes into a stock of sense,
with little or no trouble of his own. 'Tis true, a fortune in knowledge
which descends in this manner, as well as an inherited estate, is too
often neglected and squandered away; because we do not consider the
difficulty in raising it.
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support
us under solitude, and keep us from being a burthen to ourselves. They
help us to forget the crossness of men and things; compose our cares and
our passions; and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of
the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness,
pride, or design in their conversation. However, to be constantly in the
wheel has neither pleasure nor improvement in it. A man may as well
expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading.
Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than
nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable,
and gives health and vigour to the mind. Neither ought we to be too
implicit or resigning to authorities, but to examine before we assent,
and preserve our reason in its just liberties. To walk always upon
crutches is the way to lose the use of our limbs. Such an absolute
submission keeps us in a perpetual minority, breaks the spirits of the
understanding, and lays us open to imposture.
But books well managed afford direction and discovery. They strengthen
the organ and enlarge the prospect, and give a more universal insight
into things than can be learned from unlettered observation. He who
depends only upon his own experience has but a few materials to work
upon. He is confined to narrow limits both of place and time: and is not
fit to draw a large model and to pronounce upon business which is
complicated and unusual. There seems to be much the same difference
between a man of mere practice and another of learning as there is
between an empiric and a physician. The first may have a good recipe,
or two; and if diseases and patients were very scarce, and all alike, he
might do tolerably well. But if you inquire concerning the causes of
distempers, the constitution of human bodies, the danger of symptoms,
and the methods of cure, upon which the success of medicine depends, he
knows little of the matter. On the other side, to take measures wholly
from books, without looking into men and business, is like travelling in
a map, where, though countries and cities are well enough distinguished,
yet villages and private seats are either overlooked, or too generally
marked for a stranger to find. And therefore he that would be a master
must draw by the life, as well as copy from originals, and join theory
and experience together.
J. COLLIER. _Essays upon several Moral Subjects._
INSTRUCTION OR AMUSEMENT
Books, we are told, propose to _instruct_ or to _amuse_. Indeed!
However, not to spend any words upon it, I suppose you will admit that
this wretched antithesis will be of no service to us.... For this
miserable alternative being once admitted, observe what follows. In
which class of books does the _Paradise Lost_ stand? Among those which
instruct or those which amuse? Now, if a man answers, among those which
instruct,--he lies: for there is no instruction in it, nor could be in
any great poem, according to the meaning which the word must bear in
this distinction, unless it is meant that it should involve its own
antithesis. But if he says, 'No--amongst those which amuse,'--then what
a beast must he be to degrade, and in this way, what has done the most
of any human work to raise and dignify human nature. But the truth is,
you see, that the idiot does not wish to degrade it; on the contrary, he
would willingly tell a lie in its favour, if that would be admitted; but
such is the miserable state of slavery to which he has reduced himself
by his own puny distinction; for, as soon as he hops out of one of his
little cells he is under a necessity of hopping into the other. The true
antithesis to knowledge in this case is not _pleasure_, but power. All,
that is literature, seeks to communicate power; all, that is not
literature, to communicate knowledge.--T. DE QUINCEY. _Letters to a
Young Man._
EXERCISE FOR THE MIND
From my own Apartment, March 16, 1709
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. As by the one
health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated; by the other, virtue
(which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and
confirmed. But as exercise becomes tedious and painful when we make use
of it only as the means of health, so reading is apt to grow uneasy and
burdensome when we apply ourselves to it only for our improvement in
virtue. For this reason the virtue which we gather from a fable or an
allegory is like health we get by hunting; as we are engaged in an
agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us
insensible of the fatigues that accompany it.--SIR R. STEELE. _Tatler_,
147.
WHY BOOKS WERE INVENTED
Books were invented to take off the odium of immediate superiority and
soften the rigour of duties prescribed by the teachers and censors of
human kind--setting at least those who are acknowledged wiser than
ourselves at a distance. When we recollect, however, that for this very
reason they are seldom consulted and little obeyed, how much cause shall
his contemporaries have to rejoice that their living Johnson forced them
to feel the reproofs due to vice and folly--while Seneca and Tillotson
were no longer able to make impression except on our shelves.--T. PERCY.
WHY BOOKS ARE READ
It is difficult to enumerate the several motives which procure to books
the honour of perusal: spite, vanity, and curiosity, hope and fear, love
and hatred, every passion which incites to any other action, serves at
one time or another to stimulate a reader.
Some are found to take a celebrated volume into their hands, because
they hope to distinguish their penetration by finding faults that have
escaped the public; others eagerly buy it in the first bloom of
reputation, that they may join the chorus of praise, and not lag, as
Falstaff terms it, in 'the rearward of the fashion'.
Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about
the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not
the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read
for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge, and are
no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral
prudence than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering
attentively the proportions of a temple.
Some read that they may embellish their conversation, or shine in
dispute; some that they may not be detected in ignorance, or want the
reputation of literary accomplishments: but the most general and
prevalent reason of study is the impossibility of finding another
amusement equally cheap or constant, equally independent of the hour or
the weather. He that wants money to follow the chase of pleasure through
her yearly circuit, and is left at home when the gay world rolls to Bath
or Tunbridge; he whose gout compels him to hear from his chamber the
rattle of chariots transporting happier beings to plays and assemblies,
will be forced to seek in books a refuge from himself.--S. JOHNSON.
_Adventurer_, 137.
THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS
Every person of tolerable education has been considerably influenced by
the books he has read, and remembers with a kind of gratitude several of
those that made without injury the earliest and the strongest
impression. It is pleasing at a more advanced period to look again into
the early favourites, though the mature person may wonder how some of
them had once power to absorb his passions, make him retire into a
lonely wood in order to read unmolested, repel the approaches of sleep,
or, when it came, infect it with visions. A capital part of the proposed
task would be to recollect the books that have been read with the
greatest interest, the periods when they were read, the partiality which
any of them inspired to a particular mode of life, to a study, to a
system of opinions, or to a class of human characters; to note the
counteraction of later ones (where we have been sensible of it) to the
effect produced by the former; and then to endeavour to estimate the
whole and ultimate influence.
Considering the multitude of facts, sentiments, and characters, which
have been contemplated by a person who has read much, the effect, one
would think, must have been very great. Still, however, it is probable
that a very small number of books will have the pre-eminence in our
mental history. Perhaps your memory will promptly recur to six or ten
that have contributed more to your present habits of feeling and thought
than all the rest together.--J. FOSTER. _On a Man's Writing Memoirs of
Himself._
REMUNERATIVE READING
Cultivate above all things a taste for reading. There is no pleasure so
cheap, so innocent, and so remunerative as the real, hearty pleasure and
taste for reading. It does not come to every one naturally. Some people
take to it naturally, and others do not; but I advise you to cultivate
it, and endeavour to promote it in your minds. In order to do that you
should read what amuses you and pleases you. You should not begin with
difficult works, because, if you do, you will find the pursuit dry and
tiresome. I would even say to you, read novels, read frivolous books,
read anything that will amuse you and give you a taste for reading. On
this point all persons could put themselves on an equality. Some persons
would say they would rather spend their time in society; but it must be
remembered that if they had cultivated a taste for reading beforehand
they would be in a position to choose their society, whereas, if they
had not, the probabilities were that they would have to mix with people
inferior to themselves.--R. LOWE, LORD SHERBROOKE. _Speech to the
Students of the Croydon Science and Art Schools_, 1869.
Books bear him up awhile, and make him try
To swim with bladders of philosophy.
J. WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.
_A Satire against Mankind._
Books are men of higher stature,
And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
E. B. BROWNING. _Lady Geraldine's Courtship._
THE MOOD FOR BOOKS
How the mood for a book sometimes rushes upon one, either one knows not
why, or in consequence, perhaps, of some most trifling suggestion.
Yesterday I was walking at dusk. I came to an old farmhouse; at the
garden gate a vehicle stood waiting, and I saw it was our doctor's gig.
Having passed, I turned to look back. There was a faint afterglow in the
sky beyond the chimneys; a light twinkled at one of the upper windows. I
said to myself, '_Tristram Shandy_,' and hurried home to plunge into a
book which I have not opened for I dare say twenty years.
Not long ago, I awoke one morning and suddenly thought of the
Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller; and so impatient did I
become to open the book that I got up an hour earlier than usual. A book
worth rising for; much better worth than old Burton, who pulled Johnson
out of bed. A book which helps one to forget the idle or venomous
chatter going on everywhere about us, and bids us cherish hope for a
world 'which has such people in't'.
These volumes I had at hand; I could reach them down from my shelves at
the moment when I hungered for them. But it often happens that the book
which comes into my mind could only be procured with trouble and delay;
I breathe regretfully and put aside the thought. Ah! the books that one
will never read again. They gave delight, perchance something more; they
left a perfume in the memory; but life has passed them by for ever. I
have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me. Books
gentle and quieting; books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to
be pored over, not once but many a time. Yet never again shall I hold
them in my hand; the years fly too quickly, and are too few. Perhaps
when I lie waiting for the end, some of these lost books will come into
my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I
owed a kindness--friends passed upon the way. What regret in that last
farewell!--G. GISSING. _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft._
BY DIVINE INSPIRATION
Now it is, that the minds of men are qualified with all manner of
discipline, and the old sciences revived, which for many ages were
extinct. Now it is, that the learned languages are to their pristine
purity restored, viz. Greek, without which a man may be ashamed to
account himself a scholar, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, and Latin. Printing
likewise is now in use, so elegant and so correct, that better cannot be
imagined, although it was found out but in my time by a divine
inspiration, as, by a diabolical suggestion on the other side, was the
invention of ordnance. All the world is full of knowing men, of most
learned schoolmasters, and vast libraries; and it appears to me as a
truth, that neither in Plato's time, nor Cicero's, nor Papinian's, there
was ever such conveniency for studying, as we see at this day there is.
Nor must any adventure henceforward to come in public, or present
himself in company, that hath not been pretty well polished in the shop
of Minerva. I see robbers, hangmen, freebooters, tapsters, ostlers, and
such like, of the very rubbish of the people, more learned now than the
doctors and preachers were in my time. What shall I say? The very women
and children have aspired to this praise and celestial manna of good
learning.--RABELAIS. _The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel._
PERMANENCE FOR THOUGHT
I saw a man, who bore in his hands the same instruments as our modern
smith's, presenting a vase, which appeared to be made of iron, amidst
the acclamations of an assembled multitude engaged in triumphal
procession before the altars dignified by the name of Apollo at Delphi;
and I saw in the same place men who carried rolls of papyrus in their
hands and wrote upon them with reeds containing ink made from the soot
of wood mixed with a solution of glue. 'See,' the genius said, 'an
immense change produced in the condition of society by the two arts of
which you here see the origin; the one, that of rendering iron
malleable, which is owing to a single individual, an obscure Greek; the
other, that of making thought permanent in written characters, an art
which has gradually arisen from the hieroglyphics which you may observe
on yonder pyramids.'--SIR H. DAVY. _Consolations in Travel._
THE MIRACULOUS ART OF WRITING
Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man
has devised. Odin's _Runes_ were the first form of the work of a Hero;
_Books_, written words, are still miraculous _Runes_, the latest form!
In Books lies the _soul_ of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible
voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has
altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and
arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,--they are precious,
great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons,
Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments,
dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece,
to every thinker, still very literally lives; can be called-up again
into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has
done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in
the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men. Do not Books
still accomplish _miracles_, as _Runes_ were fabled to do? They persuade
men. Not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish girls
thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual
practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. So 'Celia'
felt, so 'Clifford' acted: the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped into
those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day. Consider
whether any _Rune_ in the wildest imagination of mythologist ever did
such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! What
built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that
divine Hebrew BOOK--the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending
his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of
Sinai! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. With the art
of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable, and
comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for
mankind commenced. It related, with a wondrous new contiguity and
perpetual closeness, the Past and Distant with the Present in time and
place; all times and all places with this our actual Here and Now. All
things were altered for men; all modes of important work of men.--T.
CARLYLE. _Heroes and Hero-Worship._
BOOKS AS MEMORIALS
In books we find the dead as it were living; in books we foresee things
to come; in books warlike affairs are methodized; the rights of peace
proceed from books. All things are corrupted and decayed with time.
Saturn never ceases to devour those whom he generates; insomuch that the
glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if God had not provided
mortals with a remedy in books. Alexander the ruler of the world; Julius
the invader of the world and of the city, the just who in unity of
person assumed the empire in arms and arts; the faithful Fabricius, the
rigid Cato, would at this day have been without a memorial if the aid of
books had failed them. Towers are razed to the earth, cities overthrown,
triumphal arches mouldered to dust; nor can the King or Pope be found
upon whom the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily
than by books. A book made, renders succession to the author: for as
long as the book exists, the author remaining [Greek: athanatos]
immortal, cannot perish.--R. DE BURY. _Philobiblon._
FASHION IN BOOKS
We commonly see the book that at Christmas lieth bound on the
stationer's stall, at Easter to be broken in the Haberdasher's shop,
which sith it is the order of proceeding, I am content this winter to
have my doings read for a toy, that in summer they may be ready for
trash. It is not strange when as the greatest wonder lasteth but nine
days, that a new work should not endure but three months. Gentlemen use
books, as gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick
them in their heads, and at night straw them at their heels. Cherries be
fulsome when they be through ripe, because they be plenty, and books be
stale when they be printed, in that they be common. In my mind Printers
and Tailors are bound chiefly to pray for gentlemen, the one hath so
many fantasies to print, the other such divers fashions to make, that
the pressing iron of the one is never out of the fire, nor the printing
press of the other any time lieth still. But a fashion is but a day's
wearing, and a book but an hour's reading, which seeing it is so, I am
of a shoemaker's mind, who careth not so the shoe hold the plucking on,
nor I, so my labours last the running over. He that cometh in print
because he would be known, is like the fool that cometh into the market
because he would be seen.--J. LYLY. _Euphues._
COATS FOR MACKEREL
I erect not here a statue to be set up in the market-place of a town, or
in a church, or in any other public place:
Non equidem hoc studeo, pullatis ut mihi nugis
Pagina turgescat. (Pers. _Sat._ v. 19.)
I study not my written leaves should grow
Big-swoln with bubbled toys, which vain breaths blow.
Secrete loquimur. (Pers. _Sat._ v. 21.)
We speak alone,
Or one to one.
It is for the corner of a library, or to amuse a neighbour, a kinsman,
or a friend of mine withal, who by this image may happily take pleasure
to renew acquaintance and to reconverse with me.... Notwithstanding if
my posterity be of another mind, I shall have wherewith to be avenged,
for they cannot make so little accompt of me, as then I shall do of
them. All the commerce I have in this with the world is that I borrow
the instruments of their writing, as more speedy and more easy; in
requital whereof I may peradventure hinder the melting of some piece of
butter in the market or a grocer from selling an ounce of pepper.
Ne toga cordylis et paenula desit olivis (Martial).
Lest fish-fry should a fit gown want,
Lest cloaks should be for Olives scant.
Et laxas scombris saepe dabo tunicas (Catullus).
To long-tailed mackerels often I
Will side-wide (paper) coats apply.
And if it happen no man read me, have I lost my time to have entertained
myself so many idle hours about so pleasing and profitable thoughts?...
I have no more made my book than my book hath made me. A book
consubstantial to his author: of a peculiar and fit occupation. A member
of my life. Not of an occupation and end strange and foreign, as all
other books.... What if I lend mine ears somewhat more attentively unto
books, sith I but watch if I can filch something from them wherewith to
enamel and uphold mine? I never study to make a book, yet have I
somewhat studied, because I had already made it (if to nibble or pinch,
by the head or feet, now one author and then another, be in any sort to
study), but nothing at all to form my opinions.--MONTAIGNE.
TO HIS BOOK
Thou art a plant sprung up to wither never,
But, like a laurel, to grow green for ever.
Make haste away, and let one be
A friendly patron unto thee;
Lest rapt from hence, I see thee lie
Torn for the use of pasterie;
Or see thy injured leaves serve well
To make loose gowns for mackerel;
Or see the grocers, in a trice,
Make hoods of thee to serve out spice.
If hap it must that I must see thee lie
Absyrtus-like, all torn confusedly;
With solemn tears, and with much grief of heart,
I'll recollect thee, weeping, part by part;
And having washed thee, close thee in a chest
With spice; that done, I'll leave thee to thy rest.
The bound, almost, now of my book I see;
But yet no end of those therein or me;
Here we begin new life; while thousands quite
Are lost, and theirs, in everlasting night.
Go thou forth, my book, though late
Yet be timely fortunate.
It may chance good luck may send
Thee a kinsman or a friend
That may harbour thee, when I
With my fates neglected lie.
If thou know'st not where to dwell,
See, the fire's by. Farewell.
R. HERRICK. _Hesperides._
IMMORTALITY IN BOOKS
Since honour from the honourer proceeds,
How well do they deserve, that memorize
And leave in books for all posterities
The names of worthies and their virtuous deeds;
When all their glory else, like water-weeds
Without their element, presèntly dies,
And all their greatness quite forgotten lies,
And when and how they flourished no man heeds!
How poor remembrances are statues, tombs,
And other monuments that men erect
To princes, which remain in closèd rooms,
Where but a few behold them, in respect
Of books, that to the universal eye
Show how they lived; the other where they lie!
S. DANIEL.
ENDURING MONUMENTS
We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable
than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of
a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples,
castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to
have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, no, nor
of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals
cannot last, and the copies cannot but leese of the life and truth. But
the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from
the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they
fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their
seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and
opinions in succeeding ages. So that if the invention of the ship was
thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to
place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of
their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships
pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to
participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the
other?--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the Advancement of Learning._
THE STRANGE QUALITY OF BOOKS
Books have that strange quality, that being of the frailest and
tenderest matter, they outlast brass, iron and marble; and though their
habitations and walls, by uncivil hands, be many times overthrown; and
they themselves, by foreign force, be turned prisoners, yet do they
often, as their authors, keep their giver's names; seeming rather to
change places and masters than to suffer a full ruin and total wreck.
So, many of the books of Constantinople changed Greece for France and
Italy; and in our time, that famous Library in the Palatinate changed
Heidelberg for the Vatican. And this I think no small duty, nor meaner
gift and retribution, which I render back again to my benefactor's
honest fame, being a greater matter than riches; riches being momentany
and evanishing, scarce possessed by the third heir; fame immortal, and
almost everlasting; by fame riches is often acquired, seldom fame by
riches; except when it is their good hap to fall in the possession of
some generous-minded man. And though a philosopher said of famous men,
disdainfully, that they died two deaths, one in their bodies, another,
long after, in their names, he must confess, that where other men live
but one life, famous men live two.--W. DRUMMOND. _Bibliotheca
Edinburgena Lectori._
BOOKS ARE NOT DEAD THINGS
I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well
as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on
them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do
contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose
progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest
efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know
they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous
dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up
armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good
almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a
reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills
reason itself; kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a
man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious
life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a
life beyond life. 'Tis true no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps,
there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the
loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the
worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against
the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man
preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be
thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole
impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the
slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth
essence--the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a
life.--J. MILTON. _Areopagitica._
SHAKESPEARE IN HEAVEN
BOSWELL. 'There is a strange unwillingness to part with life,
independent of serious fears as to futurity. A reverend friend of ours
(naming him) tells me, that he feels an uneasiness at the thoughts of
leaving his house, his study, his books.'
JOHNSON. 'This is foolish in ---- [Percy?]. A man need not be uneasy on
these grounds; for, as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with
the philosopher, _Omnia mea mecum porto_.'
BOSWELL. 'True, Sir: we may carry our books in our heads; but still
there is something painful in the thought of leaving for ever what has
given us pleasure. I remember, many years ago, when my imagination was
warm, and I happened to be in a melancholy mood, it distressed me to
think of going into a state of being in which Shakespeare's poetry did
not exist. A lady whom I then much admired, a very amiable woman,
humoured my fancy, and relieved me by saying, "The first thing you will
meet in the other world will be an elegant copy of Shakespeare's works
presented to you."'
Dr. Johnson smiled benignantly at this, and did not appear to disapprove
of the notion.--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._
THE LIBRARIES OF HEAVEN
I cannot think the glorious world of mind,
Embalmed in books, which I can only see
In patches, though I read my moments blind,
Is to be lost to me.
I have a thought that, as we live elsewhere,
So will these dear creations of the brain;
That what I lose unread, I'll find, and there
Take up my joy again.
O then the bliss of blisses, to be freed
From all the wants by which the world is driven;
With liberty and endless time to read
The libraries of Heaven!
R. LEIGHTON.
THE ONLY THINGS THAT LAST FOR EVER
Actions pass away and are forgotten, or are only discernible in their
effects; conquerors, statesmen, and kings live but by their names
stamped on the page of history. Hume says rightly that more people think
about Virgil and Homer (and that continually) than ever trouble their
heads about Caesar or Alexander. In fact, poets are a longer-lived race
than heroes: they breathe more of the air of immortality. They survive
more entire in their thoughts and acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer
did, as much as if we had lived at the same time with them: we can hold
their works in our hands, or lay them on our pillows, or put them to our
lips. Scarcely a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so
as to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living
men, still breathing and moving in their writings. The others, the
conquerors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy (so
to speak) between thought and thought is more intimate and vital than
that between thought and action. Thought is linked to thought as flame
kindles into flame: the tribute of admiration to the manes of departed
heroism is like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas,
feelings, with the progress of time harden into substances: things,
bodies, actions, moulder away, or melt into a sound, into thin
air!--Yet though the schoolmen in the Middle Ages disputed more about
the texts of Aristotle than the battle of Arbela, perhaps Alexander's
Generals in his lifetime admired his pupil as much and liked him better.
For not only a man's actions are effaced and vanish with him; his
virtues and generous qualities die with him also: his intellect only is
immortal and bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only
things that last for ever.--W. HAZLITT. _Table Talk._
THE AUTHORS' METAMORPHOSIS
How pleasant it is to reflect, that all these lovers of books have
themselves become books! What better metamorphosis could Pythagoras have
desired! How Ovid and Horace exulted in anticipating theirs! And how the
world have justified their exultation! They had a right to triumph over
brass and marble. It is the only visible change which changes no
further; which generates and yet is not destroyed. Consider: mines
themselves are exhausted; cities perish; kingdoms are swept away, and
man weeps with indignation to think that his own body is not immortal.
Muoiono le città, muoiono i regni,
E l'uom d'esser mortal par che si sdegni.
Yet this little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a
book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention of the
press can anything short of an universal convulsion of nature abolish
it. To a shape like this, so small yet so comprehensive, so slight yet
so lasting, so insignificant yet so venerable, turns the mighty activity
of Homer, and, so turning, is enabled to live and warm us for ever. To a
shape like this turns the placid sage of Academus: to a shape like this
the grandeur of Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance
of Pope, and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the
compressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together
The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
May I hope to become the meanest of these existences? This is a question
which every author who is a lover of books asks himself some time in
his life; and which must be pardoned, because it cannot be helped. I
know not. I cannot exclaim with the poet,
Oh that my name were numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.
For my mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of them may be, are of
consequence to others. But I should like to remain visible in this
shape. The little of myself that pleases myself I could wish to be
accounted worth pleasing others. I should like to survive so, were it
only for the sake of those who love me in private, knowing as I do what
a treasure is the possession of a friend's mind, when he is no more. At
all events, nothing while I live and think can deprive me of my value
for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last,
and love them till I die; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once
more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to
lay my overbeating temples on a book, and so have the death I most
envy.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _My Books._
O BLESSED LETTERS
O blessed letters! that combine in one
All ages past, and make one live with all,
By you we do confer with who are gone,
And the dead-living unto council call;
By you the unborn shall have communion
Of what we feel and what doth us befall.
* * * * *
What good is like to this,
To do worthy the writing, and to write
Worthy the reading, and the world's delight?
S. DANIEL. _Musophilus._
Though they [philosophers] write _contemptu gloriae_, yet, as Hieron
observes, they will put their names to their books.--R. BURTON.
A LASTING LINK OF AGES
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper--even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his!
And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,
His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank,
Or graven stone found in a barrack's station
In digging the foundation of a closet,
May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.
And glory long has made the sages smile;
'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind--
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind:
Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle:
The present century was growing blind
To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks,
Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.
G. GORDON, LORD BYRON. _Don Juan._
THE VIRTUE OF A TRUE BOOK
Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon-up to the
extent of three: Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled
Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges
may belong; and thirdly--Books. In which third, truly, the last
invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others. Wondrous
indeed is the virtue of a true Book! Not like a dead city of stones,
yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but
then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it
stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have Books that
already number some hundred-and-fifty human ages); and yearly comes its
new produce of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, Philosophical,
Political Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic
Essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can
persuade men. O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two
centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they
name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror
or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true
sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all
marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple
and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will
pilgrim.--T. CARLYLE. _Sartor Resartus._
ACTION AND REACTION
Some of the well-puffed fashionable novels of eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine hold the pastry of eighteen hundred and thirty; and others,
which are now extolled in language almost too high-flown for the merits
of _Don Quixote_, will, we have no doubt, line the trunks of eighteen
hundred and thirty-one.--LORD MACAULAY. _Mr. Robert Montgomery's Poems._
THE ULTIMATE TEST OF BOOKS
Some of the Histories that our age has produced are books in the truest
sense of the word. They illustrate great periods in our own annals, and
in the annals of other countries. They show what a divine discipline has
been at work to form men; they teach us that there is such a discipline
at work to form us into men. That is the test to which I have urged that
all books must at last be brought; if they do not bear it, their doom is
fixed. They may be light or heavy, the penny sheet or the vast folio;
they may speak of things seen or unseen; of Science or Art; of what has
been or what is to be; they may amuse us or weary us, flatter us or
scorn us; if they do not assist to make us better and more substantial
men, they are only providing fuel for a fire larger, and more utterly
destructive, than that which consumed the Library of the Ptolemies.--F.
D. MAURICE. _On Books._
BOOKS OF THE HOUR AND OF ALL TIME
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the
books of all time. Mark this distinction--it is not one of quality only.
It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one that
does. It is a distinction of species. There are good books for the hour,
and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all
time. I must define the two kinds before I go farther.
The good book of the hour, then,--I do not speak of the bad ones--is
simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot
otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you
what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's
present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humoured
and witty discussions of question; lively or pathetic story-telling in
the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in
the events of passing history;--all these books of the hour, multiplying
among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar
characteristic and possession of the present age: we ought to be
entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make
no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use, if we allow
them to usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they are
not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print.... A
book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it
merely, but to preserve it. The author has something to say which he
perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he
knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say
it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly,
at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or
group of things, manifest to him;--this the piece of true knowledge, or
sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize.
He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could;
saying, 'This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and
slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is
not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your
memory.' That is his 'writing'; it is, in his small human way, and with
whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or
scripture. That is a 'Book'....
Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest
men:--by great leaders, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are
all at your choice; and life is short. You have heard as much before;
yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its
possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read
that--that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go
and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk
with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy
consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the
common crowd for _entrée_ here, and audience there, when all the while
this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world,
multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place
and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take
fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into
it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy
of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly
tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the
society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that
are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the
Dead.--J. RUSKIN. _Sesame and Lilies._
WHO WILL BELIEVE MY VERSE
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage
And stretchèd metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice,--in it and in my rhyme.
W. SHAKESPEARE.
IMMORTALITY IN SONG
How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet!
Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;
Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex's only glory:
So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
Still to survive in my immortal song.
M. DRAYTON.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washèd it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
'Vain man,' said she, 'that dost in vain essay
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wipèd out likewise.'
'Not so,' quoth I; 'let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.'
E. SPENSER.
WELL I REMEMBER HOW YOU SMILED
Well I remember how you smiled
To see me write your name upon
The soft sea-sand--'O! _what a child!_
_You think you're writing upon stone!_'
I have since written what no tide
Shall ever wash away, what men
Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
And find Ianthe's name again.
W. S. LANDOR.
THE MULTIPLICITY OF BOOKS
Solomon saith truly, Of making many books there is no end, so insatiable
is the thirst of men therein; as also endless is the desire of many in
buying and reading them. But we come to our rules.
1. _It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by
getting a great library._ As soon shall I believe every one is valiant
that hath a well-furnished armoury. I guess good housekeeping by the
smoking, not the number of the tunnels, as knowing that many of them,
built merely for uniformity, are without chimneys, and more without
fires. Once a dunce void of learning but full of books flouted a
libraryless scholar with these words: _Salve doctor sine libris._ But
the next day the scholar coming into this jeerer's study, crowded with
books; _Salvete libri_, saith he, _sine doctore_.
2. _Few books, well selected, are best._ Yet, as a certain fool bought
all the pictures that came out, because he might have his choice, such
is the vain humour of many men in gathering of books: yet when they have
done all, they miss their end, it being in the editions of authors as in
the fashions of clothes, when a man thinks he hath gotten the latest and
newest, presently another newer comes out.
3. _Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of._ Namely, first,
voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly,
auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as
are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look
through them; and he that peeps through the casement of the index sees
as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be
excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only
trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having
gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe
they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish
with skill in those authors they never seriously studied.
4. _The genius of the author is commonly discovered in the dedicatory
epistle._ Many place the purest grain in the mouth of the sack for
chapmen to handle or buy: and from the dedication one may probably guess
at the work, saving some rare and peculiar exceptions. Thus, when once a
gentleman admired how so pithy, learned, and witty a dedication was
matched to a flat, dull, foolish book; _In truth_, said another, _they
may be well matched together, for I profess they are nothing akin_.
5. _Proportion an hour's meditation to an hour's reading of a staple
author._ This makes a man master of his learning, and dispirits the book
into the scholar. The king of Sweden never filed his men above six deep
in one company, because he would not have them lie in useless clusters
in his army, but so that every particular soldier might be drawn out
into service. Books that stand thin on the shelves, yet so as the owner
of them can bring forth every one of them into use, are better than far
greater libraries....
But what do I, speaking against multiplicity of books in this age, who
trespass in this nature myself? What was a learned man's compliment, may
serve for my confession and conclusion: _Multi mei similes hoc morbo
laborant, ut cum scribere nesciant tamen a scribendo temperare non
possint_.--T. FULLER. _The Holy State and the Profane State._
SUPERFLUOUS BOOKS
I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
Alexandria. For my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and
could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I,
with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. I would not
omit a copy of _Enoch's Pillars_, had they many nearer authors than
Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have
written more than others have spoken. Pineda quotes more authors in one
work than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great
inventions in Germany, there are two which are not without their
incommodities, and 'tis disputable whether they exceed not their use and
commodities. 'Tis not a melancholy _Utinam_ of mine own, but the desires
of better heads that there were a general synod; not to unite the
incompatible differences of religion, but for the benefit of learning,
to reduce it as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to
condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten
only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of scholars, and to
maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.--SIR T. BROWNE. _Religio
Medici._
MULTIPLICATION IS VEXATION
The reason that books are multiplied, in spite of the general law that
beings shall not be multiplied without necessity, is, that books are
made from books. A new history of France or Spain is manufactured from
several volumes already printed, without adding anything new. All
dictionaries are made from dictionaries; almost all new geographical
books are made from other books of geography; St. Thomas's dream has
brought forth two thousand large volumes of divinity; and the same race
of little worms that have devoured the parent are now gnawing the
children.--VOLTAIRE. _Philosophical Dictionary: Books._
THE MULTIPLICATION OF ORIGINALS
The invention of printing has not, perhaps, multiplied books, but only
the copies of them; and if we believe there were six hundred thousand in
the library of Ptolemy, we shall hardly pretend to equal it by any of
ours, nor, perhaps, by all put together; I mean so many originals that
have lived any time, and thereby given testimony to their having been
thought worth preserving. For the scribblers are infinite, that like
mushrooms or flies are born and die in small circles of time; whereas
books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and
esteem of ages through which they have passed.--SIR W. TEMPLE. _Ancient
and Modern Learning._
THE AUTHORS' ADVANTAGE
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage ... is this, that they
can multiply their originals; or rather can make copies of their works,
to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals
themselves. This gives a great author something like a prospect of
eternity, but at the same time deprives him of those other advantages
which artists meet with. The artist finds greater returns in profit, as
the author in fame. What an inestimable price would a Virgil or a Homer,
a Cicero or an Aristotle bear, were their works like a statue, a
building, or a picture, to be confined only in one place, and made the
property of a single person!--J. ADDISON. _Spectator_, 166.
AN IGNORANT AGE HATH MANY BOOKS
It is observed that _a corrupt society has many laws_; I know not
whether it is not equally true, that _an ignorant age has many books_.
When the treasures of ancient knowledge lie unexamined, and original
authors are neglected and forgotten, compilers and plagiaries are
encouraged who give us again what we had before, and grow great by
setting before us what our own sloth had hidden from our view.--S.
JOHNSON. _Idler_, 85.
THE DIFFUSION OF BOOKS AND ITS EFFECT ON CULTURE
Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing
companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both
continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every man,
if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access
for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should
be sacrificed to this.
One of the very interesting features of our times is the multiplication
of books, and their distribution through all conditions of society. At a
small expense a man can now possess himself of the most precious
treasures of English literature. Books, once confined to a few by their
costliness, are now accessible to the multitude; and in this way a
change of habits is going on in society, highly favourable to the
culture of the people. Instead of depending on casual rumour and loose
conversation for most of their knowledge and objects of thought; instead
of forming their judgements in crowds, and receiving their chief
excitement from the voice of neighbours; men are now learning to study
and reflect alone, to follow out subjects continuously, to determine for
themselves what shall engage their minds, and to call to their aid the
knowledge, original views, and reasonings of men of all countries and
ages; and the results must be, a deliberateness and independence of
judgement, and a thoroughness and extent of information, unknown in
former times. The diffusion of these silent teachers, books, through the
whole community, is to work greater effects than artillery, machinery,
and legislation. Its peaceful agency is to supersede stormy revolutions.
The culture, which is to spread, whilst an unspeakable good to the
individual, is also to become the stability of nations.--W. E. CHANNING.
_Self-Culture._
THE DISTRACTION OF CHOICE
Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm, that a
miserable distraction of choice (which is the germ of such a madness)
must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it
are, in fact, very prevalent; and that one of the chief symptoms is an
enormous 'gluttonism' for books, and for adding language to language;
and in this way it is that literature becomes much more a source of
torment than of pleasure. Nay, I will go further, and will say that of
many, who escape this disease, some owe their privilege simply to the
narrowness of their minds and the contracted range of their sympathies
with literature--which enlarged, they would soon lose it! others, again,
owe it to their situation; as, for instance, in a country town, where,
books being few, a man can use up all his materials, his appetite is
unpalled--and he is grateful for the loan of a MS., &c.: but bring him
up to London--show him the wagon-loads of unused stores--which he is at
liberty to work up--tell him that these even are but a trifle, perhaps,
to what he may find in the libraries of Paris, Dresden, Milan, &c.--of
religious houses--of English noblemen, &c.; and this same man, who came
up to London blithe and happy, will leave it pale and sad. You have
ruined his peace of mind: a subject which he fancied himself capable of
exhausting, he finds to be a labour for centuries: he has no longer the
healthy pleasure of feeling himself master of his materials; he is
degraded into their slave.--T. DE QUINCEY. _Letters to a Young Man._
A LIBRARY OF ONE
Were I to name, out of the times gone by,
The poets dearest to me, I should say,
Pulci for spirits, and a fine, free way;
Chaucer for manners, and close, silent eye;
Milton for classic taste, and harp strung high;
Spenser for luxury, and sweet, sylvan play;
Horace for chatting with, from day to day;
Shakespeare for all, but most, society.
But which take with me, could I take but one?
Shakespeare,--as long as I was unoppressed
With the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser;
But did I wish, out of the common sun
To lay a wounded heart in leafy rest,
And dream of things far off and healing,--Spenser.
J. H. LEIGH HUNT.
A LIBRARY OF TWELVE
You may get the whole of Sir Thomas Browne's works more easily than the
_Hydrotaphia_ in a single form.... If I were confined to a score of
English books, this I think would be one of them; nay, probably, it
would be one if the selection were cut down to twelve. My library, if
reduced to those bounds, would consist of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser,
and Milton; Lord Clarendon; Jackson, Jeremy Taylor, and South; Isaac
Walton, Sidney's _Arcadia_, Fuller's _Church History_, and Sir Thomas
Browne; and what a wealthy and well-stored mind would that man have,
what an inexhaustible reservoir, what a Bank of England to draw upon for
profitable thoughts and delightful associations, who should have fed
upon them.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to G. C. Bedford).
ANCIENT AND MODERN BOOKS
Whoever converses much among the old books will be something hard to
please among the new; yet these must have their part, too, in the
leisure of an idle man, and have, many of them, their beauties as well
as their defaults. Those of story, or relations of matter of fact, have
a value from their substance as much as from their form, and the variety
of events is seldom without entertainment or instruction, how
indifferently soever the tale is told. Other sorts of writings have
little of esteem but what they receive from the wit, learning, or genius
of the authors, and are seldom met with of any excellency, because they
do but trace over the paths that have been beaten by the ancients, or
comment, critic, and flourish upon them, and are at best but copies
after those originals, unless upon subjects never touched by them, such
as are all that relate to the different constitutions of religions,
laws, or governments in several countries, with all matters of
controversy that arise upon them.--SIR W. TEMPLE. _Ancient and Modern
Learning._
THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS
Immediately the two main bodies withdrew, under their several ensigns,
to the farther parts of the library, and there entered into cabals and
consults upon the present emergency. The Moderns were in very warm
debates upon the choice of their leaders; and nothing less than the fear
impending from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon
this occasion. The difference was greatest among the horse, where every
private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and Milton to
Dryden and Wither. The light-horse were commanded by Cowley and
Despreaux. There came the bowmen under their valiant leaders, Descartes,
Gassendi, and Hobbes; whose strength was such that they could shoot
their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to fall down again, but turn,
like that of Evander, into meteors; or, like the cannon-ball, into
stars. Paracelsus brought a squadron of stinkpot-flingers from the snowy
mountains of Rhaetia. There came a vast body of dragoons, of different
nations, under the leading of Harvey, their great aga: part armed with
scythes, the weapons of death; part with lances and long knives, all
steeped in poison; part shot bullets of a most malignant nature, and
used white powder, which infallibly killed without report. There came
several bodies of heavy-armed foot, all mercenaries, under the ensigns
of Guiccardini, Davila, Polydore, Virgil, Buchanan, Mariana, Camden, and
others. The engineers were commanded by Regiomontanus and Wilkins. The
rest was a confused multitude, led by Scotus, Aquinas, and Bellarmine;
of mighty bulk and stature, but without either arms, courage, or
discipline. In the last place came infinite swarms of calones, a
disorderly rout led by L'Estrange; rogues and ragamuffins, that follow
the camp for nothing but the plunder, all without coats to cover them.
The Army of the Ancients was much fewer in number; Homer led the horse,
and Pindar the light-horse; Euclid was chief engineer; Plato and
Aristotle commanded the bowmen; Herodotus and Livy the foot;
Hippocrates, the dragoons; the allies, led by Vossius and Temple,
brought up the rear.
All things violently tending to a decisive battle, Fame, who much
frequented, and had a large apartment assigned her in the regal library,
fled up straight to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a faithful account of
all that passed between the two parties below; for among the Gods she
always tells truth. Jove, in great concern, convokes a council in the
Milky Way. The senate assembled, he declares the occasion of convening
them; a bloody battle just impendent between two mighty armies of
ancient and modern creatures, called books, wherein the celestial
interest was but too deeply concerned. Momus, the patron of the Moderns,
made an excellent speech in their favour, which was answered by Pallas,
the protectress of the Ancients. The assembly was divided in their
affections; when Jupiter commanded the Book of Fate to be laid before
him. Immediately were brought by Mercury three large volumes in folio,
containing memoirs of all things past, present, and to come. The clasps
were of silver double gilt, the covers of celestial turkey leather, and
the paper such as here on earth might almost pass for vellum. Jupiter,
having silently read the decree, would communicate the import to none,
but presently shut up the book....
Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an ancient
prophecy which bore no very good face to his children the Moderns, bent
his flight to the region of a malignant deity called Criticism. She
dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla; there Momus found
her extended in her den, upon the spoils of numberless volumes, half
devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind
with age; at her left, Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps
of paper herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot,
hoodwinked, and headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her
played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dullness and Vanity,
Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners.... 'Goddess,' said Momus, 'can
you sit idly here while our devout worshippers, the Moderns, are this
minute entering into a cruel battle, and perhaps now lying under the
swords of their enemies? Who then hereafter will ever sacrifice or build
altars to our divinities? Haste, therefore, to the British Isle, and, if
possible, prevent their destruction; while I make factions among the
gods, and gain them over to our party.' ...
The goddess and her train, having mounted the chariot, which was drawn
by tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her influence in due
places, till at length she arrived at her beloved island of Britain; but
in hovering over its metropolis, what blessings did she not let fall
upon her seminaries of Gresham and Covent Garden! And now she reached
the fatal plain of St. James's library, at what time the two armies were
upon the point to engage; where, entering with all her caravan unseen,
and landing upon a case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by a
colony of virtuosos, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of both
armies.--J. SWIFT. _The Battle of the Books._
OLD AUTHORS TO READ
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say, in commendation of Age, that Age
appeared to be best in four things; Old wood best to burn, old wine to
drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.--F. BACON, LORD
VERULAM. _Apophthegmes._
CLASSICUS
Classicus is a man of learning, and well versed in all the best authors
of antiquity. He has read them so much that he has entered into their
spirit, and can very ingeniously imitate the manner of any of them. All
their thoughts are his thoughts, and he can express himself in their
language. He is so great a friend to this improvement of the mind that
if he lights on a young scholar he never fails to advise him concerning
his studies.
Classicus tells his young man he must not think that he has done enough
when he has only learnt languages; but that he must be daily conversant
with the best authors, read them again and again, catch their spirit by
living with them, and that there is no other way of becoming like them,
or of making himself a man of taste and judgement.
How wise might Classicus have been and how much good might he have done
in the world, if he had but thought as justly of devotion as he does of
learning!... The two testaments would not have had so much as a place
amongst his books, but that they are both to be had in Greek.
Classicus thinks that he sufficiently shows his regard for the holy
scriptures when he tells you that he has no other book of piety besides
them.--W. LAW. _A serious Call to a devout and holy Life._
THE DEAD ALONE CANONIZED
That critic must indeed be bold
Who pits new authors against old.
Only the ancient coin is prized,
The dead alone are canonized:
What was even Shakespeare until then?
A poet scarce compared with Ben:
And Milton in the streets no taller
Than sparkling easy-ambling Waller.
Waller now walks with rhyming crowds,
While Milton sits above the clouds,
Above the stars, his fixed abode,
And points to men their way to God.
W. S. LANDOR.
THE CLASSICS
Will nothing but from Greece or Rome
Please me? is nothing good at home?
Yes; better; but I look in vain
For a Molière or La Fontaine.
Swift in his humour was as strong,
But there was gall upon his tongue.
Bitters and acids may excite,
Yet satisfy not appetite.
W. S. LANDOR.
THE MOONS OF LITERATURE
SIR, ... we must read what the world reads at the moment. It has been
maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern
times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read
so much of what is of inferior value, in order to be in the fashion; so
that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will
have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read
modern books than from having read the best books of antiquity. But it
must be considered, that we have now more knowledge generally diffused;
all our ladies read now, which is a great extension. Modern writers are
the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light
borrowed from the ancients. Greece appears to me to be the fountain of
knowledge; Rome of elegance.--S. JOHNSON. (Boswell's _Life_.)
THE READING OF NEW BOOKS
From Lien Chi Altangi to Fum Hoam, First President of the
Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China
There are numbers in this city who live by writing new books; and yet
there are thousands of volumes in every large library unread and
forgotten. This, upon my arrival, was one of those contradictions which
I was unable to account for. Is it possible, said I, that there should
be any demand for new books before those already published are read? Can
there be so many employed in producing a commodity with which the market
is overstocked; and with goods also better than any of modern
manufacture!
What at first view appeared an inconsistency is a proof at once of this
people's wisdom and refinement. Even allowing the works of their
ancestors better written than theirs, yet those of the moderns acquire a
real value, by being marked with the impression of the times. Antiquity
has been in the possession of others; the present is our own: let us
first therefore learn to know what belongs to ourselves, and then, if we
have leisure, cast our reflections back to the reign of Shonsu, who
governed twenty thousand years before the creation of the moon.
The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the
curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a
kingdom, are much better for immediate use; the former are often prized
above their intrinsic value, and kept with care, the latter seldom pass
for more than they are worth, and are often subject to the merciless
hands of sweating critics and clipping compilers: the works of antiquity
were ever praised, those of the moderns read; the treasures of our
ancestors have our esteem, and we boast the passion; those of
contemporary genius engage our heart, although we blush to own it. The
visits we pay the former resemble those we pay the great; the ceremony
is troublesome, and yet such as we would not choose to forgo; our
acquaintance with modern books is like sitting with a friend; our pride
is not flattered in the interview, but it gives more internal
satisfaction....
In England, where there are as many new books published as in all the
rest of Europe together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns among the
people; they have been often known to act like fools, they are generally
found to think like men.--O. GOLDSMITH. _Letters from a Citizen of the
World._
THE CLASSICS ALWAYS MODERN
In science read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the
oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and
re-decorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.--E.
G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, LORD LYTTON. _Caxtoniana._
ON READING OLD BOOKS
I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have
read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any
desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring
myself to sit down to the _Tales of My Landlord_, but now that author's
works have made a considerable addition to my scanty library.... Women
judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which are admired
only 'in their newest gloss'. That is not my way. I am not one of those
who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers
for mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say
that I am greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well
versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the
last century; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's _State Papers_, in
russia leather; or an ample impression of Sir William Temple's _Essays_,
with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do not think
altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a
generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the
living.... When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener
the better), I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not
lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new,
I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish--turn and pick out a bit
here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There
is a want of confidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled
books are also like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally
little else than hashes and _rifaccimentos_ of what has been served up
entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus
turning to a well-known author, there is not only an assurance that my
time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most
insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried,
and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hours away.
It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests--dearer,
alas! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance.
In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel
I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a
critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it.
It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first
reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard
productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being.
They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal
identity. They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life.
They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can
take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics
of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.
They are 'for thoughts and for remembrance'! They are like Fortunatus's
Wishing Cap--they give us the best riches--those of Fancy; and transport
us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives,
at a word's notice!
My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this
purpose a volume of _Peregrine Pickle_ or _Tom Jones_. Open either of
them anywhere--at the memoirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the
masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and
Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and
her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture--and there I
find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself
the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay,
sometimes the sight of an odd volume of these good old English authors
on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves
of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and
sets 'the puppets dallying'. Twenty years are struck off the list, and I
am a child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said,
that he should like very well to be young again, if he could take his
experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be
aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being
young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would fain
place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never comes too late with
years. Oh! what a privilege to be able to let this hump, like
Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport oneself, by
the help of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when 'ignorance was
bliss', and when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world,
through the glass of fiction--gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts
in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages--or at curiosities in a
museum, that we must not touch! For myself, not only are the old ideas
of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their
vividness, but the old associations of the faces and persons of those I
then knew, as they were in their lifetime--the place where I sat to read
the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields,
the sky--return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better
to me--those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that
come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page, are to me
better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel.--W. HAZLITT. _The
Plain Speaker._
ON READING NEW BOOKS
I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world
for reading new books. If the public had read all those that have gone
before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work
twice over; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened,
unregarded, unread, and unthought of, I cannot enter into the pathetic
complaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes no more--that the
press is idle--that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book
before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was
printed yesterday or three h
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