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 hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has
no modern, passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then
it is so much the newer; it is farther removed from other works that I
have lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes
so much more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon
think of putting on old armour as of taking up a book not published
within the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in
reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would
imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old; that they
have a pleasure in being read for the first time; that they open their
leaves more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the
spirit of novelty; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put
them on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in practice....
The knowledge which so many other persons have of its contents deadens
our curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one
on which others have made up their minds for us (as if we really could
have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert for the next new
work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the first to read,
criticize, and pass an opinion on. Oh, delightful! To cut open the
leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine
the type to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the value that
is set upon the work), to launch out into regions of thought and
invention never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met
a human eye before--this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party,
or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when the work is
critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out, or to face
a coterie of blue-stockings in the evening, without having gone through
this ordeal, or at least without hastily turning over a few of the first
pages, while dressing, to be able to say that the beginning does not
promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?

A new work is something in our power: we mount the bench, and sit in
judgement on it; we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can
decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have
not yet read it, and expect an account of it; and thus show our
shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had
time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by
busying ourselves about it, a kind of _accessories after the fact_.--W.
HAZLITT. _Sketches and Essays._

A PREFERENCE FOR GREAT MODELS

By the by, I observe a point in which your taste and mine differ from
each other materially. It is about new publications. I read them
unwillingly. You abstain from them with difficulty, and as a matter of
duty and self-denial. Their novelty has very little attraction for me;
and in literature I am fond of confining myself to the best company,
which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I am desirous
of becoming more intimate; and I suspect that nine times out of ten it
is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over
again, than to read a new one for the first time. If I hear of a new
poem, for instance, I ask myself first, whether it is superior to Homer,
Shakespeare, Ariosto, Virgil, or Racine; and, in the next place, whether
I already have all these authors completely at my fingers' ends. And
when both questions have been answered in the negative, I infer that it
is better (and, to me, it is certainly pleasanter) to give such time as
I have to bestow on the reading of poetry to Homer, Ariosto and Co., and
so of other things.

Is it not better to try, at least, to elevate and adorn one's mind, by
the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to
know of one's own knowledge that such a book an't worth reading?--J. W.
WARD, EARL OF DUDLEY (Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff).

THE VALUE OF MODERN BOOKS

The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what
they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their relative
value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by
mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of
our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy
could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled,
if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader
can make shift without _Oedipus_ and _Medea_, while he possesses
_Othello_ and _Hamlet_. If he knows nothing of _Pyrgopolynices_ and
_Thraso_, he is familiar with _Bobadil_, and _Bessus_, and _Pistol_, and
_Parolles_. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find
some compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from
_Nephelococcygia_, he may take refuge in _Lilliput_.... We believe that
the books which have been written in the languages of Western Europe,
during the last two hundred and fifty years--translations from the
ancient languages of course included,--are of greater value than all the
books which at the beginning of that period were extant in the
world.--LORD MACAULAY. _Lord Bacon._

A SORT OF THIRD ESTATE

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or, rather, each
generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will
not fit this. Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which
attaches to the act of creation--the act of thought--is transferred to
the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth
the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit:
henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero
corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes
noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the
multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so
opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an
outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written
on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who
start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight
of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their
duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have
given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in
libraries when they wrote these books.

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm. Hence, the
book-learned class, who value books as such; not as related to nature
and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with
the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the
emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.--R. W.
EMERSON. _The American Scholar._

OLD AND NEW BOOKS

Old books, as you well know, are books of the world's youth, and new
books are fruits of its age. How many of all these ancient folios round
me are like so many old cupels? The gold has passed out of these long
ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was
mingled.--O. W. HOLMES. _The Professor at the Breakfast-Table._

SECURITY IN OLD BOOKS

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for
us! What a precious feeling of seclusion in having a double wall of
centuries between us and the heats and clamours of contemporary
literature! How limpid seems the thought, how pure the old wine of
scholarship that has been settling for so many generations in those
silent crypts and Falernian _amphorae_ of the Past! No other writers
speak to us with the authority of those whose ordinary speech was that
of our translation of the Scriptures; to no modern is that frank
unconsciousness possible which was natural to a period when reviews were
not; and no later style breathes that country charm characteristic of
days ere the metropolis drew all literary activity to itself, and the
trampling feet of the multitude had banished the lark and the daisy from
the fresh privacies of language. Truly, as compared with the present,
these old voices seem to come from the morning fields and not the paved
thoroughfares of thought....

There are volumes which have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering
experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked colour and
ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that
have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;--these
quaint freaks of russet tell of Montaigne; these stripes of crimson
fire, of Shakespeare; this sober gold, of Sir Thomas Browne; this
purpling bloom, of Lamb;--in such fruits we taste the legendary gardens
of Alcinoüs and the orchards of Atlas; and there are volumes again which
can claim only the inglorious senility of Old Parr or older Jenkins,
which have outlived their half-dozen of kings to be the prize of showmen
and treasuries of the born-to-be-forgotten trifles of a hundred years
ago....

There is to us a sacredness in a volume, however dull; we live over
again the author's lonely labours and tremulous hopes; we see him, on
his first appearance after parturition, 'as well as could be expected,'
a nervous sympathy yet surviving between the late-severed umbilical cord
and the wondrous offspring, doubtfully entering the Mermaid, or the
Devil Tavern, or the Coffee-house of Will or Button, blushing under the
eye of Ben or Dryden or Addison, as if they must needs know him for the
author of the _Modest Enquiry into the Present State of Dramatique
Poetry_, or of the _Unities briefly considered by Philomusus_, of which
they have never heard and never will so much as hear the names; we see
the country-gentlemen (sole cause of its surviving to our day) who buy
it as a book no gentleman's library can be complete without; we see the
spendthrift heir, whose horses and hounds and Pharaonic troops of
friends, drowned in a Red Sea of claret, bring it to the hammer, the
tall octavo in tree-calf following the ancestral oaks of the park. Such
a volume is sacred to us. But it must be the original foundling of the
book-stall, the engraved blazon of some extinct baronetcy within its
cover, its leaves enshrining memorial-flowers of some passion smothered
while the Stuarts were not yet unkinged, suggestive of the trail of
laced ruffles, burnt here and there with ashes from the pipe of some
dozing poet, its binding worn and weather-stained, that has felt the
inquisitive finger, perhaps, of Malone, or thrilled to the touch of
Lamb, doubtful between desire and the odd sixpence. When it comes to a
question of reprinting we are more choice. The new duodecimo is bald and
bare, indeed, compared with its battered prototype that could draw us
with a single hair of association.--J. R. LOWELL. _Library of Old
Authors._

TO MY BOOK

    It will be looked for, book, when some but see
      Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,
    Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall,
      Wormwood and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal,
    Become a petulant thing, hurl ink and wit
      As madmen stones; not caring whom they hit.
    Deceive their malice, who could wish it so;
      And by thy wiser temper let men know
    Thou art not covetous of least self-fame,
      Made from the hazard of another's shame:
    Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,
      To catch the world's loose laughter, or vain gaze.
    He that departs with his own honesty
      For vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.

                                    BEN JONSON.

HIS PRAYER FOR ABSOLUTION

    For those my unbaptizèd rhymes,
    Writ in my wild unhallowed times;
    For every sentence, clause, and word,
    That's not inlaid with thee, my Lord,
    Forgive me, God, and blot each line
    Out of my book that is not thine.
    But if, 'mongst all, thou findst here one
    Worthy thy benediction;
    That one of all the rest shall be
    The glory of my work and me.

                       R. HERRICK. _Noble Numbers._

BOOKS THAT DO HURT

In our forefathers' time, when papistry, as a standing pool, covered and
overflowed all England, few books were read in our tongue, saving
certain books of chivalry, as they said for pastime and pleasure; which,
as some say, were made in monasteries by idle monks or wanton canons. As
one for example, 'Morte Arthur', the whole pleasure of which book
standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry....
This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at, or honest men to take
pleasure at: yet I know, when God's Bible was banished the court, and
'Morte Arthur' received into the prince's chamber.

What toys the daily reading of such a book may work in the will of a
young gentleman, or a young maid, that liveth wealthily or idly, wise
men can judge, and honest men do pity. And yet ten 'Morte Arthurs' do
not the tenth part so much harm, as one of these books made in Italy and
translated in England.... Suffer these books to be read, and they shall
soon displace all books of godly learning.--R. ASCHAM. _The
Schoolmaster._

BOOKS AND THIEVES

    A good book steals the mind from vain pretences,
    From wicked cogitations and offences;
    It makes us know the world's deceiving pleasures,
    And set our hearts on never-ending treasures.
    So when thieves steal our cattle, coin, or ware,
    It makes us see how mutable they are:
    Puts us in mind that we should put our trust
    Where felon cannot steal or canker rust.
    Bad books through eyes and ears do break and enter,
    And take possession of the heart's frail centre,
    Infecting all the little kingdom man
    With all the poisonous mischief that they can,
    Till they have robbed and ransacked him of all
    Those things which men may justly goodness call;
    Rob him of virtue and of heavenly grace,
    And leave him beggared in a wretched state.
    So of our earthly goods, thieves steal the best,
    And richest jewels, and leave us the rest.
    Men know not thieves from true men by their looks,
    Nor by their outsides no man can know books.
    Both are to be suspected, all can tell,
    And wise men, ere they trust, will try them well:
    Some books not worth the reading for their fruits,
    Some thieves not worth the hanging, for their suits.
    And as with industry, and art, and skill
    One thief doth daily rob another still,
    So one book from another, in this age,
    Steals many a line, a sentence, or a page.
    And as the veriest thief may have some friend
    So the worst books some knave will still defend.

    Still books and thieves in one conceit do join,
    For, if you mark them, they are all for coin.

                   J. TAYLOR. _An Arrant Thief._

MOUNTEBANK AUTHORS

They [the Stationers] have so pestered their printing-houses and shops
with fruitless volumes that the ancient and renowned authors are almost
buried among them as forgotten; and that they have so much work to
prefer their termly pamphlets, which they provide to take up the
people's money and time, that there is neither of them left to bestow on
a profitable book: so they who desire knowledge are still kept ignorant;
their ignorance increaseth their affection to vain toys; their
affection makes the stationer to increase his provision of such stuff,
and at last you shall see nothing to be sold amongst us but Curranto's
_Bevis of Southampton_ or such trumpery. The Arts are already almost
lost among the writings of mountebank authors. For if any one among us
would study Physic, the Mathematics, Poetry, or any of the liberal
sciences, they have in their warehouses so many volumes of quack-salving
receipts; of false propositions; and of inartificial rhymings (of which
last sort they have some of mine there, God forgive me!) that unless we
be directed by some artist, we shall spend half our age before we can
find those authors which are worth our readings. For what need the
stationer be at the charge of printing the labours of him that is master
of his art, and will require that respect which his pain deserveth,
seeing he can hire for a matter of forty shillings some needy ignoramus
to scribble upon the same subject, and by a large promising title, make
it as vendible for an impression or two, as though it had the
quintessence of all art?--G. WITHER. _The Scholler's Purgatory._

PRINTERS GAIN BY BAD BOOKS

_Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have
lost._ Arius Montanus, in printing the Hebrew Bible, commonly called the
Bible of the king of Spain, much wasted himself, and was accused in the
court of Rome for his good deed, and being cited thither, _Pro tantorum
laborum praemio vix veniam impetravit_. Likewise Christopher Plantin, by
printing of his curious interlineary Bible in Antwerp, through the
unseasonable exactions of the king's officers, sunk and almost ruined
his estate. And our worthy English knight, who set forth the
golden-mouthed father in a silver print, was a loser by it.

_Whereas foolish pamphlets prove most beneficial to the printers._ When
a French printer complained that he was utterly undone by printing a
solid serious book of Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him
recompense, made that his jesting scurrilous work, which repaired the
printer's loss with advantage. Such books the world swarms too much
with. When one had set out a witless pamphlet, writing _finis_ at the
end thereof, another wittily wrote beneath it:

    ----_Nay there thou liest, my friend,
    In writing foolish books there is no end._

And surely such scurrilous scandalous papers do more than conceivable
mischief. First, their lusciousness puts many palates out of taste, that
they can never after relish any solid and wholesome writers; secondly,
they cast dirt on the faces of many innocent persons, which dried on by
continuance of time can never after be washed off; thirdly, the
pamphlets of this age may pass for records with the next, because
publicly uncontrolled, and what we laugh at, our children may believe:
fourthly, grant the things true they jeer at, yet this music is unlawful
in any Christian church, to play upon the sins and miseries of others,
the fitter object of the elegies than the satires of all truly
religious.--T. FULLER. _The Holy State and the Profane State._

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO

If writings are thus durable, and may pass from age to age throughout
the whole course of time, how careful should an author be of committing
anything to print that may corrupt posterity, or poison the minds of men
with vice and error! Writers of great talents, who employ their parts in
propagating immorality, and seasoning vicious sentiments with wit and
humour, are to be looked upon as the pests of society and the enemies of
mankind: they leave books behind them, as it is said of those who die in
distempers which breed an ill will towards their own species, to scatter
infection and destroy their posterity. They act the counterparts of a
Confucius or a Socrates; and seem to have been sent into the world to
deprave human nature, and sink it into the condition of brutality.--J.
ADDISON. _Spectator_, 166.

He who has published an injurious book, sins, as it were, in his very
grave; corrupts others while he is rotting himself.--R. SOUTH.

BOOKS BAD AND GOOD

    A mind unnerved, or indisposed to bear
    The weight of subjects worthiest of her care,
    Whatever hopes a change of scene inspires,
    Must change her nature, or in vain retires.
    An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
    As useless if it goes as when it stands,
    Books therefore, not the scandal of the shelves,
    In which lewd sensualists print out themselves;
    Nor those in which the stage gives vice a blow,
    With what success let modern manners show;
    Nor his who, for the bane of thousands born,
    Built God a church, and laughed His word to scorn,
    Skilful alike to seem devout and just,
    And stab religion with a sly side-thrust;
    Nor those of learned philologists, who chase
    A panting syllable through time and space,
    Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
    To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark;
    But such as learning without false pretence,
    The friend of truth, the associate of sound sense,
    And such as, in the zeal of good design,
    Strong judgement labouring in the scripture mine,
    All such as manly and great souls produce,
    Worthy to live, and of eternal use:
    Behold in these what leisure hours demand,
    Amusement and true knowledge hand in hand.
    Luxury gives the mind a childish cast,
    And while she polishes, perverts the taste;
    Habits of close attention, thinking heads,
    Become more rare as dissipation spreads,
    Till authors hear at length, one gen'ral cry,
    Tickle and entertain us, or we die.
    The loud demand, from year to year the same,
    Beggars invention and makes fancy lame,
    Till farce itself, most mournfully jejune,
    Calls for the kind assistance of a tune;
    And novels (witness every month's review)
    Belie their name and offer nothing new.
    The mind, relaxing into needful sport,
    Should turn to writers of an abler sort,
    Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,
    Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.
    Friends (for I cannot stint, as some have done,
    Too rigid in my view, that name to one;
    Though one, I grant it, in the generous breast,
    Will stand advanced a step above the rest:
    Flowers by that name promiscuously we call,
    But one, the rose, the regent of them all)--
    Friends, not adopted with a school-boy's haste,
    But chosen with a nice discerning taste,
    Well-born, well-disciplined, who, placed apart
    From vulgar minds, have honour much at heart,
    And, though the world may think the ingredients odd,
    The love of virtue, and the fear of God!
    Such friends prevent what else would soon succeed,
    A temper rustic as the life we lead,
    And keep the polish of the manners clean,
    As their's who bustle in the busiest scene;
    For solitude, however some may rave,
    Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave,
    A sepulchre in which the living lie,
    Where all good qualities grow sick and die.

                        W. COWPER, _Retirement_.

ON CERTAIN BOOKS

    Faith and fixed hope these pages may peruse,
    And still be faith and hope; but, O ye winds!
    Blow them far off from all unstable minds,
    And foolish grasping hands of youth! Ye dews
    Of heaven! be pleased to rot them where they fall,
    Lest loitering boys their fancies should abuse,
    And they get harm by chance, that cannot choose;
    So be they stained and sodden, each and all!
    And if, perforce, on dry and gusty days,
    Upon the breeze some truant leaf should rise,
    Brittle with many weathers, to the skies,
    Or flit and dodge about the public ways--
    Man's choral shout, or organ's peal of praise
    Shall shake it into dust, like older lies.

                        C. TENNYSON TURNER.

'TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE'

'To the pure all things are pure'; not only meats and drinks, but all
kind of knowledge, whether of good or evil; the knowledge cannot defile,
nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.
For books are as meats and viands are, some of good, some of evil
substance; and yet God, in that unapocryphal vision, said without
exception, 'Rise, Peter, kill and eat'; leaving the choice to each man's
discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or
nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not
unapplicable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good
nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is
of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many
respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.... If
it be true that a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of
the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the best book,
yea, or without book, there is no reason that we should deprive a wise
man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a
fool that which being restrained will be no hindrance to his folly.--J.
MILTON. _Areopagitica._

LIBERTY AND BAD BOOKS

The men who died to buy us liberty knew that it was better to let in a
thousand bad books than shut out one good one. We cannot, then, silence
evil books, but we can turn away our eyes from them; we can take care
that what we read, and what we let others read, should be good and
wholesome.--C. KINGSLEY. _Village Sermons: On Books._

BAD BOOKS AND DEBAUCHED MINDS

Books will perhaps be found, in a less degree than is commonly imagined,
the corrupters of the morals of mankind. They form an effective
subsidiary to events and the contagion of vicious society: but, taken by
themselves, they rarely produce vice and profligacy where virtue existed
before. Everything depends upon the spirit in which they are read. He
that would extract poison from them, must for the most part come to
them with a mind already debauched. The power of books in generating
virtue is probably much greater than in generating vice.--W. GODWIN.
_The Inquirer: Of Choice in Reading._

VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE

    To read my book, the virgin shy
    May blush, while Brutus standeth by:
    But when he's gone, read through what's writ,
    And never stain a cheek for it.

                   R. HERRICK. _Hesperides._

A WHIMSICAL SURPRISE

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral
alone, and reading _Candide_.

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once
detected--by a familiar damsel--reclined at my ease upon the grass, on
Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading--_Pamela_. There was nothing in the
book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated
herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could
have wished it had been--any other book. We read on very sociably for a
few pages; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up,
and--went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture,
whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the
nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the
secret.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._

ROMANCES ARE PERNICIOUS

Make careful choice of the books which you read. Let the Holy Scriptures
ever have the pre-eminence, and next them, the solid, lively, heavenly
treatises which best expound and apply the Scriptures: and next those,
the credible histories, especially of the Church, and tractates upon
inferior sciences and arts: but take heed of the poison of the writings
of false teachers, which would corrupt your understandings: and of vain
romances, play-books, and false stories, which may bewitch your
fantasies and corrupt your hearts.

To a very judicious able reader, who is fit to censure all he reads,
there is no great danger in the reading of the Books of any seducers: it
doth but show him how little and thin a cloak is used to cover a bad
cause. But alas, young soldiers, not used to such wars, are startled at
a very sophism, or at a terrible threatening of damnation to dissenters
(which every censorious sect can use) or at every confident triumphant
boast, or at everything that hath a fair pretence of truth or
godliness.... Meddle not therefore with poison, till you better know how
to use it, and may do it with less danger; as long as you have no need.

As for play-books, and romances, and idle tales, I have already showed,
in my _Book of Self-denial_, how pernicious they are, especially to
youth, and to frothy, empty, idle wits, that know not _what a man is_,
nor what he hath to do in the world. They are powerful baits of the
Devil, to keep more necessary things out of their minds, and better
books out of their hands, and to poison the mind so much the more
dangerously, as they are read with more delight and pleasure.--R.
BAXTER. _Christian Directory._

WHETHER 'TIS LAWFUL TO READ ROMANCES

Though we think then that the reading these Books may be lawful, and
have some Convenience too, as to forming the Minds of Persons of
Quality; yet we think 'em not all convenient for the Vulgar, because
they give 'em extravagant Ideas of Practice, and before they have
Judgement to bias their Fancies, and generally make 'em think themselves
some King or Queen or other:--One Fool must be Mazares, t'other Artamen;
and so for the Women, no less than Queens or Empresses will serve 'em,
the Inconveniences of which are afterwards oftentimes sooner observed
than remedied. Add to this, the softening of the Mind by Love, which are
the greatest subject of these sort of Books, and the fooling away so
many Hours and Days and Years, which might be much better employed, and
which must be repented of: And upon the whole, we think Young People
would do better, either not to read 'em at all, or to use 'em more
sparingly than they generally do, when once they set about 'em.--From
the _Athenian Mercury_ (1691-7).

THE DANGER OF POETS AND ROMANCES

It is impossible for me, by any words that I can use, to express, to the
extent of my thoughts, the danger of suffering young people to form
their opinions from the writings of poets and romances. Nine times out
of ten, the morality they teach is bad, and must have a bad tendency.
Their wit is employed to _ridicule virtue_, as you will almost always
find, if you examine the matter to the bottom. The world owes a very
large part of its sufferings to tyrants; but what tyrant was there
amongst the ancients, whom the poets did not place _amongst the gods_?
Can you open an English poet without, in some part or other of his
works, finding the grossest flatteries of royal and noble persons? How
are young people not to think that the praises bestowed on these persons
are just? Dryden, Parnell, Gay, Thomson, in short, what poet have we
had, or have we, Pope only excepted, who was not, or is not, a
pensioner, or a sinecure placeman, or the wretched dependant of some
part of the Aristocracy? Of the extent of the power of writers in
producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking instances in
the cases of Dr. Johnson and Burke.... It is, therefore, the duty of
every father, when he puts a book into the hands of his son or daughter,
to give the reader a true account of _who_ and _what_ the writer of the
book was, or is.--W. COBBETT. _Advice to Young Men and (incidentally) to
Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life._

A DAUGHTER'S FAVOURITE NOVELS

I could make neither head nor tail of it; it was neither fish, flesh,
nor good red herring: it was all about my Lord, and Sir Harry, and the
Captain.... The people talk such wild gibberish as no folks in their
sober senses ever did talk; and the things that happen to them are not
like the things that ever happen to me or any of my acquaintance. They
are at home one minute, and beyond the sea the next; beggars to-day,
and lords to-morrow; waiting-maids in the morning, and duchesses at
night.... One would think every man in these books had the bank of
England in his escritoire.... In these books (except here and there one,
whom they make worse than Satan himself), every man and woman's child of
them, are all wise, and witty, and generous, and rich, and handsome, and
genteel, and all to the last degree. Nobody is middling, or good in one
thing and bad in another, like my live acquaintance; but it is all up to
the skies, or down to the dirt. I had rather read _Tom Hickathrift_, or
_Jack the Giant Killer_, a thousand times.--HANNAH MORE. _The Two
Wealthy Farmers._

'ONLY A NOVEL'

'What are you reading, Miss----?' 'Oh! it's only a novel!' replies the
young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or
momentary shame. 'It is only _Cecilia_, or _Camilla_, or _Belinda_'; or,
in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are
displayed; in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the
happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit or
humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.--JANE
AUSTEN. _Northanger Abbey._

NOVELS AS ENGINES OF CIVILIZATION

The listlessness and want of sympathy with which most of the works
written expressly for circulation among the labouring classes are read
by them, if read at all, arises mainly from this--that the story told,
or the lively or friendly style assumed, is _manifestly_ and _palpably_
only a cloak for the instruction intended to be conveyed--a sort of
gilding of what they cannot well help fancying must be a pill, when they
see so much and such obvious pains taken to wrap it up.... You will find
that in the higher and better class of works of fiction and imagination
duly circulated, you possess all that you require to strike your
grappling-iron into their souls, and chain them, willing followers, to
the car of civilization.... The novel, in its best form, I regard as one
of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.--SIR J.
HERSCHEL. _Address to the Subscribers to the Windsor Public Library._

A NOVEL OF HIGH LIFE

    Lord Harry has written a novel,
      A story of elegant life;
    No stuff about love in a hovel,
      No sketch of a commoner's wife:
    No trash, such as pathos and passion,
      Fine feelings, expression, and wit;
    But all about people of fashion,
      Come look at his caps--how they fit!

    O Radcliffe! thou once wert the charmer
      Of girls who sat reading all night;
    Thy heroes were striplings in armour,
      Thy heroines damsels in white.
    But past are thy terrible touches,
      Our lips in derision we curl,
    Unless we are told how a Duchess
      Conversed with her cousin the Earl.

    We now have each dialogue quite full
      Of titles--'I give you my word,
    My lady, you're looking delightful';
      'O dear, do you think so, my lord!'
    'You've heard of the marquis's marriage,
      The bride with her jewels new set,
    Four horses, new travelling carriage,
      And _déjeuner à la fourchette_?'

    _Haut Ton_ finds her privacy broken,
      We trace all her ins and her outs;
    The very small talk that is spoken
      By very great people at routs.
    At Tenby Miss Jinks asks the loan of
      The book from the innkeeper's wife,
    And reads till she dreams she is one of
      The leaders of elegant life.

                        T. H. BAYLY.

LADY CONSTANCE ... guanoed her mind by reading French novels.--B.
DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. _Tancred._

NOVELS ARE SWEETS

Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love
them--almost all women;--a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Why,
one of the most learned physicians in England said to me only yesterday,
'I have just read _So-and-So_ for the second time' (naming one of
Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors,
mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers; as well as young boys and
sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.--W. M. THACKERAY.
_Roundabout Papers: On a Lazy Idle Boy._

EVERY MAN HIS DUE

As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth, a
bee gathers wax and honey out of many flowers, and makes a new bundle of
all,

    _Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant_,

I have laboriously collected this cento out of various authors, and that
_sine injuria_: I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own;
which Hierom so much commends in Nepotian; he stole not whole verses,
pages, tracts, as some do nowadays, concealing their authors' names; but
still said this was Cyprian's, that Lactantius, that Hilarius, so said
Minutius Felix, so Victorinus, thus far Arnobius: I cite and quote mine
authors (which, howsoever some illiterate scribblers account pedantical,
as a cloak of ignorance, and opposite to their affected fine style, I
must and will use) _sumpsi, non surripui_; and what Varro, lib. 6 de re
rust., speaks of bees, _minime maleficae, nullius opus vellicantes
faciunt deterius_, I can say of myself. Whom have I injured? The matter
is theirs most part and yet mine: _apparet unde sumptum sit_ (which
Seneca approves); _aliud tamen, quam unde sumptum sit, apparet_; which
nature doth with the aliment of our bodies, incorporate, digest,
assimilate, I do _concoquere quod hausi_, dispose of what I take: I make
them pay tribute, to set out this my Macaronican: the method only is
mine own. I must usurp that of _Wecker e Ter. nihil dictum quod non
dictum prius: methodus sola artificem ostendit_: we can say nothing but
what hath been said, the composition and method is ours only, and shows
a scholar. Oribasius, Aëtius, Avicenna, have all out of Galen, but to
their own method, _diverso stylo, non diversa fide_. Our poets steal
from Homer; he spews, saith Aelian, they lick it up. Divines use
Austin's words _verbatim_ still, and our story-dressers do as much; he
that comes last is commonly best,

                  --donec quid grandius aetas
                  Postera, sorsque ferat melior.

                  R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._

PLAGIARIE

He [King Charles I, in his _Eikon Basilike_] borrows David's Psalmes, as
he charges the Assembly of Divines in his twentieth Discourse, _To have
set forth old Catechisms and confessions of faith new drest_. Had he
borrowed David's heart, it had been much the holier theft. For such kind
of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good
Authors is accounted Plagiarie. However, this was more tolerable than
Pamela's prayer, stolen out of Sir Philip.--J. MILTON. _Eikonoklastes._

TRANSPLANTATION

I number not my borrowings, but I weigh them. And if I would have made
their number to prevail, I would have had twice as many. They are all,
or almost all, of so famous and ancient names, that methinks they
sufficiently name themselves without me. If in reasons, comparisons, and
arguments, I transplant any into my soil, or confound them with mine
own, I purposely conceal the author, thereby to bridle the rashness of
these hasty censures that are so headlong cast upon all manner of
compositions, namely, young writings of men yet living.... I will have
them to give Plutarch a bob upon mine own lips, and vex themselves in
wronging Seneca in me.--MONTAIGNE.

BOOK-MAKERS AND PLAGIARISTS

Some that turn over all books, and are equally searching in all papers;
that write out of what they presently find or meet, without choice; by
which means it happens that what they have discredited and impugned in
one work, they have before or after extolled the same in another. Such
are all the Essayists, even their master Montaigne. These in all they
write confess still what books they have read last, and therein their
own folly so much that they bring it to the stake raw and undigested;
not that the place did need it neither, but that they thought themselves
furnished and would vent it.

Some again, who, after they have got authority, or, which is less,
opinion, by their writings, to have read much, dare presently to feign
whole books and authors, and lie safely. For what never was will not
easily be found, not by the most curious.

And some, by a cunning protestation against all reading, and false
venditation of their own naturals, think to divert the sagacity of their
readers from themselves, and cool the scent of their fox-like thefts,
when yet they are so rank as a man may find whole pages together usurped
from one author.--BEN JONSON. _Timber._

A LEARNED PLAGIARY

The greatest man of the last age, Ben Jonson, was willing to give place
to the classics in all things: he was not only a professed imitator of
Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others; you track him
everywhere in their snow. If Horace, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Seneca,
and Juvenal had their own from him, there are few serious thoughts which
are new in him.... But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may
see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a
monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in
him.--J. DRYDEN. _Essay of Dramatic Poesy._

Steal! to be sure they will, and, egad! serve your best thoughts as
gipsies do stolen children--disfigure them to make them pass for their
own.--R. B. SHERIDAN. _The Critic._

HIDDEN TREASURE

Writers ... are apter to be beholding to books than to men, not only as
the first are more in their possession, being more constant companions
than dearest friends, but because they commonly make such use of
treasure found in books as of other treasure belonging to the dead and
hidden under ground; for they dispose of both with great secrecy,
defacing the shape or images of the one as much as of the other, through
fear of having the original of their stealth or abundance discovered.
And the next cause why writers are more in libraries than in company is
that books are easily opened, and learned men are usually shut up by a
froward or envious humour of retention, or else unfold themselves so as
we may read more of their weakness and vanity than wisdom, imitating the
holiday-custom in great cities, where the shops of chandlery and slight
wares are familiarly open, but those of solid and staple merchandise are
proudly locked up.--SIR W. DAVENANT. _Gondibert._

LITERARY COOKERY

We have been reading a treatise on the morality of Shakespeare; it is a
happy and easy way of filling a book, that the present race of authors
have arrived at--that of criticizing the works of some eminent poet:
with monstrous extracts and short remarks. It is a species of cookery I
begin to grow tired of; they cut up their authors into chops, and by
adding a little crumbled bread of their own, and tossing it up a little,
they present it as a fresh dish; you are to dine upon the poet;--the
critic supplies the garnish; yet has the credit, as well as profit, of
the whole entertainment.--HANNAH MORE. _Memoirs._

THE MANUFACTORY OF BOOKS

To a veteran like myself, who have watched the books of forty seasons,
there is nothing so old as a new book. An astonishing sameness and want
of individuality pervades modern books. The ideas they contain do not
seem to have passed through the mind of the writer. They have not even
that originality--the only originality which John Mill in his modesty
would claim for himself--'which every thoughtful mind gives to its own
mode of conceiving and expressing truths which are common
property'--(_Autobiography_). When you are in London step into the
reading-room of the British Museum. There is the great manufactory out
of which we turn the books of the season. It was so before there was any
British Museum. It was so in Chaucer's time--

    For out of the old fields, as men saith,
    Cometh all this new corn from year to year,
    And out of old books in good faith
    Cometh all this new science that men lere.

It continued to be so in Cervantes' day. 'There are,' says he in _Don
Quixote_, 'men who will make you books and turn them loose in the world
with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.'

It is not, then, any wonder that De Quincy should account it 'one of the
misfortunes of life that one must read thousands of books only to
discover that one need not have read them'.... And I cannot doubt that
Bishop Butler had observed the same phenomenon when he wrote, in 1729:
'The great number of books of amusement which daily come in one's way,
have in part occasioned this idle way of considering things. By this
means time, even in solitude, is happily got rid of without the pain of
attention; neither is any part of it more put to the account of
idleness, one can scarce forbear saying is spent with less thought, than
great part of that which is spent in reading.'--MARK PATTISON.
_Fortnightly Review: Books and Critics._

HOW VOLUMES SWELL

                    The muse shall tell
    How science dwindles, and how volumes swell;
      How commentators each dark passage shun,
    And hold their farthing candles to the sun;
      How tortured texts to speak our sense are made,
    And every vice is to the scripture laid.

                    E. YOUNG. _Love of Fame._

RECIPE FOR AN ANTHOLOGY

Our modern wits are not to reckon upon the infinity of matter for a
constant supply. What remains, therefore, but that our last recourse
must be had to large indexes and little compendiums? Quotations must be
plentifully gathered, and booked in alphabet; to this end, though
authors need to be little consulted, yet critics, and commentators, and
lexicons carefully must. But, above all, those judicious collectors of
bright parts, and flowers, and _observandas_, are to be nicely dwelt on;
by some called the sieves and coulters of learning, though it is left
undetermined whether they dealt in pearls or meal, and consequently,
whether we are more to value that which passed through, or what stayed
behind. By these methods, in a few weeks, there starts up many a writer
capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For
what though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full?
And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and
grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of
transcribing from others, and digressing from himself, as often as he
shall see occasion; he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting
up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's
shelf; there to be preserved neat and clean for a long eternity, adorned
with the heraldry of its title fairly inscribed on a label; never to be
thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of
darkness in a library.--J. SWIFT. _A Tale of a Tub._

His Invention is no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few
gleanings there, and his disposition of them is just as the
book-binder's, a setting or glueing of them together.--J. EARLE.
_Microcosmographie._

Good God! how many dungboats full of fruitless works do they yearly
foist on his Majesty's subjects; how many hundred reams of foolish,
profane, and senseless ballads do they quarterly disperse abroad.--G.
WITHER (1632).

TO LEIGH HUNT, ON AN OMISSION IN HIS 'FEAST OF THE POETS'

    Leigh Hunt! thou stingy man, Leigh Hunt!
    May Charon swamp thee in his punt,
    For having, in thy list, forgotten
    So many poets scarce half rotten,
    Who did expect of thee at least
    A few cheese-parings from thy _Feast_.
    Hast thou no pity on the men
    Who suck (as babes their tongues) the pen,
    Until it leaves no traces where
    It lighted, and seems dipped in air?
    At last be generous, Hunt! and prithee
    Refresh (and gratis too) in Lethe
    Yonder sick Muse, surcharged with poppies
    And heavier presentation-copies.
    She _must_ grow livelier, and the river
    More potent in effect than ever.

                         W. S. LANDOR.

OUR MASTER, MELEAGER

    Our master, Meleager, he who framed
      The first Anthology and daintiest,
    Mated each minstrel with a flower, and named
      For each the blossom that beseemed him best.
    'Twas then as now; garlands were somewhat rare,
      Candidates many: one in doleful strain
    Lamented thus, 'This is a sad affair;
      How shall I face my publisher again?
    Lacking some emblem suitable for me,
      My book's undone; I shall not sell a copy.'
    'Take courage, son,' quoth Phoebus, 'there must be
      Somewhere or other certainly a poppy.'

                              R. GARNETT.

    'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
    A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.

                            LORD BYRON.

THAT INVENTION OF THE ENEMY--AN ABRIDGEMENT

All my life long I have delighted in voluminous works; in other words, I
have delighted in that sort of detail which permits so intimate a
familiarity with the subjects of which it treats.... Even in this world
of Beauties, and of Extracts, I do not believe myself quite alone in my
love of the elaborate and the minute; and yet I doubt if many people
contemplate very long very big books with the sense of coming enjoyment
which such a prospect gives me; and few shrink, as I do, with aversion
and horror from that invention of the enemy--an Abridgement. I never
shall forget the shock I experienced in seeing Bruce, that opprobrium of
an unbelieving age, that great and graphic traveller, whose eight or
nine goodly volumes took such possession of me, that I named a whole
colony of Bantams after his Abyssinian princes and princesses, calling a
little golden strutter of a cock after that arch-tyrant the Ras Michael;
and a speckled hen, the beauty of the poultry-yard, Ozoro Ester, in
honour of the Ras's favourite wife--I never felt greater disgust than at
seeing this magnificent work cut down to a thick, dumpy volume, seven
inches by five; except, perhaps, when I happened to light upon another
pet book--Drinkwater's _Siege of Gibraltar_, where I had first learned
to tremble at the grim realities of war, had watched day by day the
firing of the red-hot balls, had groped my way through the galleries,
and taken refuge in the casemates,--degraded from the fair proportions
of a goodly quarto into the thin and meagre pamphlet of a lending
library, losing a portion of its lifelike truth with every page that was
cut away.--M. R. MITFORD. _Recollections of a Literary Life._

ORIGINAL EDITIONS

We love, we own, to read the great productions of the human mind as they
were written. We have this feeling even about scientific treatises;
though we know that the sciences are always in a state of progression,
and that the alterations made by a modern editor in an old book on any
branch of natural or political philosophy are likely to be improvements.
Some errors have been detected by writers of this generation in the
speculations of Adam Smith. A short cut has been made to much knowledge
at which Sir Isaac Newton arrived through arduous and circuitous paths.
Yet we still look with peculiar veneration on the _Wealth of Nations_
and on the _Principia_, and should regret to see either of those great
works garbled even by the ablest hands. But in works which owe much of
their interest to the character and situation of the writers the case is
infinitely stronger. What man of taste and feeling can endure
_rifacimenti_, harmonies, abridgements, expurgated editions? Who ever
reads a stage-copy of a play when he can procure the original? Who ever
cut open Mrs. Siddons's _Milton_? Who ever got through ten pages of Mr.
Gilpin's translation of John Bunyan's _Pilgrim_ into modern English? Who
would lose, in the confusion of a _Diatessaron_, the peculiar charm
which belongs to the narrative of the disciple whom Jesus loved? The
feeling of a reader who has become intimate with any great original work
is that which Adam expressed towards his bride:

    'Should God create another Eve, and I
    Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
    Would never from my heart.'

No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will fill the void left by
the original. The second beauty may be equal or superior to the first;
but still it is not she.--LORD MACAULAY. _Boswell's Life of Johnson._

DEDICATIONS

Above all the rest, the gross and palpable flattery whereunto many not
unlearned have abased and abused their wits and pens, turning (as Du
Bartas saith) Hecuba into Helena, and Faustina into Lucretia, hath most
diminished the price and estimation of learning. Neither is the modern
dedication of books and writings, as to patrons, to be commended: for
that books (such as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no
patrons but truth and reason.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the
Advancement of Learning._

PRESENTATION COPIES

I want to read you some new passages from an interleaved copy of my
book. You haven't read the printed part yet. I gave you a copy of it,
but nobody reads a book that is given to him. Of course not. Nobody but
a fool expects him to. He reads a little in it here and there, perhaps,
and he cuts all the leaves if he cares enough about the writer, who will
be sure to call on him some day, and if he is left alone in his library
for five minutes will have hunted every corner of it until he has found
the book he sent,--if it is to be found at all, which doesn't always
happen, if there's a penal colony anywhere in a garret or closet for
typographical offenders and vagrants.--O. W. HOLMES. _The Poet at the
Breakfast-Table._

POETS AND THEIR BIBLIOGRAPHIES

    Old poets fostered under friendlier skies,
      Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,
      At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
    To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes;
    And you, old popular Horace, you the wise
      Adviser of the nine-years-pondered lay,
      And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay,
    Catullus, whose dead songster never dies;
    If glancing downward on the kindly sphere
      That once had rolled you round and round the Sun,
      You see your Art still shrined in human shelves,
    You should be jubilant that you flourished here
      Before the Love of Letters, overdone,
    Had swampt the sacred poets with themselves.

                        ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

MEN IN THEIR NIGHTGOWNS

Writing of Lives is very profitable, both to the memory of the party,
and to posterity. They do better lance into secret humours, and present
men in their nightgowns, when they are truly themselves. A general may
be more perfectly discovered on his pallet, than when he appears in the
head of an army.--JOHN HALL. _Horae Vacivae._

BIOGRAPHY

Oh, that mine enemy had written a book!--and that it were my life;
unless indeed it provoked my friend to write another.

It has always appeared to me a strong argument for the non-existence of
spirits that these friendly microscopic biographers are not haunted by
the ghosts of the unfortunate men whom they persist in holding up to
public contempt.--SIR A. HELPS. _Thoughts in the Cloister._

BIOGRAPHY PREFERRED TO HISTORY

Read French authors. Read Rochefoucauld. The French writers are the
finest in the world, for they clear our heads of all ridiculous
ideas....

Read no history, nothing but biography, for that is life without
theory.--B. DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. _Contarini Fleming._

ON READING TRANSLATIONS

The respectable and sometimes excellent translations of Bohn's Library
have done for literature what railroads have done for internal
intercourse. I do not hesitate to read all the books I have named, and
all good books, in translations. What is really best in any book is
translatable,--any real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, I observe
that, in our Bible, and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy
and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the original into
phrases of equal melody. The Italians have a fling at translators,--_i
traditori traduttori_; but I thank them. I rarely read any Latin, Greek,
German, Italian, sometimes not a French book in the original, which I
can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great
metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from
every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the
Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in
originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother-tongue.--R. W.
EMERSON. _Books._

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

    Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
    And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
    Round many western islands have I been
    Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
    Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
    That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
    Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
    Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
    Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
    When a new planet swims into his ken;
    Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
    He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
    Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
    Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

                               J. KEATS.

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CLASSICS

    Others again here livèd in my days
    That have of us deservèd no less praise
    For their translations than the daintiest wit
    That on Parnassus thinks he highest doth sit.
    And for a chair may 'mongst the Muses call
    As the most curious maker of them all:
    As reverent Chapman, who hath brought to us
    Musaeus, Homer, and Herodotus
    Out of the Greek, and by his skill hath reared
    Them to that height and to our tongue endeared