Hours in a Library, Volume I | Page 3

I please.
I'd rather have one single shelf Than all my friends, except yourself.
For, after all that can be said, Our best companions are the dead.
SHERIDAN to Swift.
We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to
any insult for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what
is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that
there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can
be admitted for the asking?--LOWELL, Speech at Chelsea.

On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all 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, is it
not verily the highest act of man's faculty that produces a book? It is the
thought of man. The true thaumaturgic virtue by which man marks all
things whatever. All that he does and brings to pass is the vesture of a
book.--CARLYLE, Hero Worship.
Yet it is just That here in memory of all books which lay Their sure
foundations in the heart of man, ... That I should here assert their rights,
assert Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce 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, Or His pure word by miracle revealed.
WORDSWORTH, Prelude.
Take me to some lofty room, Lighted from the western sky, Where no
glare dispels the gloom, Till the golden eve is nigh; Where the works of
searching thought, Chosen books, may still impart What the wise of old
have taught, What has tried the meek of heart; Books in long dead
tongues that stirred Loving hearts in other climes; Telling to my eyes,
unheard, Glorious deeds of olden times: Books that purify the thought,
Spirits of the learned dead, Teachers of the little taught, Comforters
when friends are fled.
BARNES, Poems of Rural Life.
A library is like a butcher's shop; it contains plenty of meat, but it is all
raw; no person living can find a meal in it till some good cook comes
along and says, 'Sir, I see by your looks that you are hungry; I know
your taste; be patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you
have an excellent appetite!'--G. ELLIS, Lockhart's 'Scott.'
A library is itself a cheap university.--H. SIDGWICK, Political
Economy.
O such a life as he resolved to live Once he had mastered all that books

can give!
BROWNING.
I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his
own.--TENNYSON.
Words! words! words!--SHAKESPEARE.
HOURS IN A LIBRARY

DE FOE'S NOVELS
According to the high authority of Charles Lamb, it has sometimes
happened 'that from no inferior merit in the rest, but from some
superior good fortune in the choice of a subject, some single work' (of a
particular author) 'shall have been suffered to eclipse, and cast into the
shade, the deserts of its less fortunate brethren.' And after quoting the
case of Bunyan's 'Holy War' as compared with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,'
he adds that, 'in no instance has this excluding partiality been exerted
with more unfairness than against what may be termed the secondary
novels or romances of De Foe.' He proceeds to declare that there are at
least four other fictitious narratives by the same writer--'Roxana,'
'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'Colonel Jack'--which possess an
interest not inferior to 'Robinson Crusoe'--'except what results from a
less felicitous choice of situation.' Granting most unreservedly that the
same hand is perceptible in the minor novels as in 'Robinson Crusoe,'
and that they bear at every page the most unequivocal symptoms of De
Foe's workmanship, I venture to doubt the 'partiality' and the
'unfairness' of preferring to them their more popular rival. The
instinctive judgment of the world is not really biassed by anything
except the intrinsic power exerted by a book over its sympathies; and as
in the long run it has honoured 'Robinson Crusoe,' in spite of the critics,
and has comparatively neglected 'Roxana' and the companion stories,
there is probably some good cause for the distinction. The apparent
injustice to books resembles what we often see in the case of men. A. B.

becomes Lord Chancellor, whilst C. D. remains for years a briefless
barrister; and yet for the life of us we cannot tell but that C. D. is the
abler man of the two. Perhaps he was wanting in some one of the less
conspicuous elements that are essential to a successful career; he said,
'Open, wheat!' instead of 'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained
unaffected by his