Hours in a Library, Volume I | Page 2

hear!
Majestic monument and pyramid! Where still the shapes of parted souls
abide Embalmed in verse; exalted souls which now Enjoy those arts
they wooed so well below, Which now all wonders plainly see That
have been, are, or are to be In the mysterious Library, The beatific
Bodley of the Deity!
COWLEY, Ode on the Bodleian.
This to a structure led well known to fame, And called, 'The Monument
of Vanished Minds,' Where when they thought they saw in well-sought
books The assembled souls of all that men thought wise, It bred such
awful reverence in their looks, As if they saw the buried writers rise.
Such heaps of written thought; gold of the dead, 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, Gondibert.
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, Areopagitica.
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, Tom Jones.
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, Tale of a Tub.
A good library always makes me melancholy, where the best author is
as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a coronation.--SWIFT.
In my youth 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 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 instruction and pleasure; 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 QUINCEY, Letter to a
young man.
A man may be judged by his library.--BENTHAM.
I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a temple.--EVELYN, to
Wotton.
'Father, I should like to learn to make gold.' 'And what would'st thou do
if thou could'st make it?' 'Why, I would build a great house and fill it
with books.'--SOUTHEY, Doctor.
What would you have more? A wife? That is none of the indispensable
requisites of life. Books? That is one of them, and I have more than I
can use.--DAVID HUME, Burton's 'Life.'
Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery! What is that
to opening a box of books? The joy upon lifting up the cover must be
something like that which we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the
door upstairs, and says, 'Please to walk in, Sir.'--SOUTHEY, Life.
I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a
king who did not love reading.--MACAULAY.

Our books ... do not our hearts hug them, and quiet themselves in them
even more than in God?--BAXTER'S Saint's Rest.
It is our duty to live among books.--NEWMAN, Tracts for the Times,
No. 2.
What lovely things books are!--BUCKLE, Life by Huth.
(Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations be not
found in books?--BERKELEY, Querist.
Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent.--SHAFTESBURY,
Characteristics.
It's mighty hard to write nowadays without getting something or other
worth listening to into your essay or your volume. The foolishest book
is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get
in anyhow.--O. W. HOLMES, Poet at the Breakfast Table.
I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny--'nullum esse librum
tam malum ut non in aliqua parte prodesset.'--GIBBON,
Autobiography.
A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.--BYRON, English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers.
While you converse with lords and dukes, I have their betters here, my
books; Fixed in an elbow chair at ease I choose companions as