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