INTRODUCTION. BOOKS. Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance, without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing: if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.-BURY, RICHARD DE, 1345?-1473, Philobiblion. He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. -SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 1588-98, Love's Labours Lost, Act iv, Scene ii. Happy, ye leaves! when as those lilly hands, Which hold my life in their dead-doing might, Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands, Like captives trembling at the victors sight. And happy lines! on which, with starry light, Those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look And reade the sorrowes of my dying spright, Written with teares in harts close-bleeding book. And happy rymes! bath'd in the sacred brooke Whom if ye please, I care for other none! If I were not a King, I would be a University man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, 1 would desire to have no other prison than that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors, et mortuis magister.-JAMES I., 1605, Speech on Visit to the Bodleian Library. Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.BACON, FRANCIS LORD, 1605, The Advancement of Learning. I never come into a library (saith Heinsius) but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not their happiness.-BURTON, ROBERT, 1621, Anatomy of Melancholy. Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.MILTON, JOHN, 1644, Areopagitica. Do not our hearts Our books. hug them, and quiet themselves in them even more than in God?-BAXTER, RICHARD, 1650, The Saint's Everlasting Rest. This to a structure led well known to fame, And called, "The Monument of Vanished Minds," Where when they thought they saw in wellsought books The assembled souls of all that men thought wise, It bred such awful reverence in their looks, Which Time does still disperse but not devour, Made them presume all was from deluge freed Which long-lived authors writ ere Noah's shower. -DAVENANT, SIR WILLIAM, 1651, Gondi bert. Unconfused Babel of all tongues! which e'er The mighty linguist Fame, or Time, the mighty traveller, That could speak, or this could hear. Where still the shapes of parted souls abide The spectacles of books.- DRYDEN, JOHN, 1668, Essay on Dramatic Poetry. Bright books! the perspectives to our weak sights, The clear projections of discerning lights, Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day, And track of fled souls, and their milkie way; Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flowers, Which in commerce with light spend all their hours; Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun, But with glad haste unveil to kiss the sun. Beneath you, all is dark and a dead night, Which whoso lives in, wants both health and sight. By sucking you, the wise, like bees, do grow Healing and rich, though this they do most slow, Because most choicely; for as great a store Have we of books, as bees of herbs, or more; And the great task to try, then know, the good, To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food, Is a rare, scant performance. For man dyes Oft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flyes. But you were all choice flowers; all set and dressed By old sage florists, who well knew the best; heed. Then thank thyself, wild fool, that would'st not be Content to know,-what was too much for thee! -VAUGHAN, HENRY, 1678, Thalia Rediviva. Read Homer once, and you can read no more; For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need. -SHEFFIELD, JOHN, 1682, Essays on Poetry. Books like proverbs receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.-TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, 1689-99, Ancient and Modern Learning. We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of modern authors should never have been able to compass our great design of everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind.SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1704, A Tale of a Tub. Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent.-SHAFTESBURY, ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER EARL, 1711, Characteristics. Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil O'er books consumed the midnight oil? -GAY, JOHN, 1727-38, The Shepherd and the Philosopher, Fables. (Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations be not found in books?-BERKELEY, GEORGE, 1735-37, The Querist. Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their books. These children may most truly be called the riches of their father, and many of them have with true filial piety fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the affection but the interest of the author may be highly injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings his book to an untimely end.-FIELDING, HENRY, 1749, The History of Tom Jones. My neighbours think me often alone, and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes, each of whom communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs quite as intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of words; and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near to me as I please; I handle them as I like; they never complain of ill-usage; and when dismissed from my presence, though ever so abruptly, take no offence.-STERNE, LAURENCE, 1775, Letters. Come, Child of Care! to make thy soul serene, Approach the treasures of this tranquil scene; Survey the dome, and, as the doors unfold, The soul's best cure, in all her cares, behold! Where mental wealth the poor in thought may find, And mental physic the diseased in mind; See here the balms that passion's wounds assuage; See coolers here, that damp the fire of rage; Mild opiates here their sober influence shed. Here all the living languages abound; Here all that live no more; preserved they lie, In tombs that open to the curious eye. -CRABBE, GEORGE, 1781, The Library. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talisman and spells. -COWPER, WILLIAM, 1785, The Task, bk. vi. I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny-"nullum esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte prodesset." -GIBBON, EDWARD, 1794, Autobiography. A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. -BYRON, LORD, 1809, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to the Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory or middle state. . . . I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old mothscented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.-LAMB, CHARLES, 1820, Oxford in the Long Vacation. In my youthful days I never entered a great library . . . but my predominant feeling was one of pain and disturbance of mind, not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on viewing his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred. years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect to the books, the same effect would be brought about by my own. death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the worst of them capable of giving me some pleasure and instruction; and before I can have had time to extract the honey from one-twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I shall be summoned away.-DE QUINCY, THOMAS, 1823-60, Letters to a Young Man. We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the inspiration, and cannot easily breathe in other air less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1826, The Plain Speaker. Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me instead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things. might go amiss, and the world frown. upon me, it would be a taste for reading. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history, -with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN, 1833, Address at the Opening of the Eton Library. It is our duty to live among books. NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY, 1834, Tracts for the Times, No. 2. Nothing is pleasanter than exploring in a library.-LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, 1836, Pericles and Aspasia. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering and soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would be no equivalent 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.-CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY, 1838, Self-Culture. On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which men can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books! . . . For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing . . . is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty that produces a Book? It is the Thought of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a Thought.-CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1841, Ileroes and Hero Worship. I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his own. -TENNYSON, ALFRED LORD, 1842, Locksley Hall. Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds. A bound volume has a charm in my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good Mussulman. He imagines that those wind-wafted records are perhaps hallowed by some sacred verse; and I, that every new book or antique one may contain the "open sesame, -the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected cave of Truth.HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, 1846, Mosses from an Old Manse. Their benediction, speak of them as powers For ever to be hallowed; only less For what we are and what we may become Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God, Of His pure Word by miracle revealed. -WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 1850, The Prelude. It is oppressive to conceive what a world of human thought and human passion is dwelling on the silent and senseless paper, how much of wisdom is ready to make its entrance into the mind that is prepared to give it welcome. . Reflecting on what a book can do and ought to do for you how it may act on your mind, and your mind react on it-and thus, holding communion, you can travel through a wilderness of volumes onward, onward through time, wisely and happily, and with perfect vision of your way, as the woodman sees a path in the forest--a path to his home, while the wanderer, whether standing or staggering, is lost in blind and blank bewilderment.-REED, HENRY, 1855, Lectures on English Literature from Chaucer to Tennyson. |